Best Moments of the 2017 Grand Prix Season (So Far)

Another year, another Grand Prix of Figure Skating season. Gone are the days in which the top skaters skipped the Grand Prix season with impunity and skaters like Michelle Kwan had to be enticed to just show up with cold, hard cash.  No--these days, even skaters of the topmost echelon are gritting their teeth through injuries, illnesses, and other assorted maladies so that they can tough it out through to qualifying for the Grand Prix Final (or worse, injure themselves trying to do). Correspondingly, national figure skating federations look to the results of the Grand Prix series to help select their Olympic and/or World teams, fans of the sport engage in vociferous debates over the scoring and/or tech panel calling after every single Grand Prix event, and the Japanese Skating Federation glitzes out their perennially sold-out NHK Trophy as if it were a contemporary Super Bowl halftime show with an unlimited budget. Observers of the Grand Prix of Figure Skating live in exciting times indeed.

With the Grand Prix Final coming up soon, let's dispel the dark cloud of injuries and absences hanging over the Grand Prix Final this year and focus on the highlights of the Grand Prix season so far:

Stuff I Like: Grand Prix 2015 (Part I)

If one were to choose one word that would be the least descriptive adjective used to describe the 2014-2015 Grand Prix of Figure Skating, it would be 'predictable.' Indeed, from the unprecedented cancellation of Trophee Eric Bompard to the veritable horde of skaters on some sort of a comeback campaign, a good number of preconceptions about the Grand Prix prior to this season have undoubtedly turned out to be laughably wrong (including mine, of course). But unpredictable as it has been, the Grand Prix has definitely not been bereft of memorable performances. Here are my favorite performances from the ladies' and the men's disciplines from this Grand Prix season:

Four Continents 2015: Ladies

The collective age of the ladies podium at the 2015 Four Continents Championships averaged around 16.67 years, which gave this competition the feel of a junior competition. The actual skating itself certainly did not deviate from this feeling.