Ryan Bradley is retiring from competition. He plans to continue being involved in skating and is going to try to keep his eligibility should the urge to compete strike him again. I wish Ryan the best of luck and while I wish Worlds would have gone more smoothly for him, I truly look forward to seeing him skate in shows - he's such a great performer.
Sarah and Drew talked to Alex Shibutani about he and Maia's World medal win, their stop in Paris, and their excitement for next season.
Adam Rippon attempting a quad lutz. It looks around 1/4 underrotated, but I'm really curious to see if he can get it all the way around over this summer.
Laura Lepisto has withdrawn from Worlds due to a back injury.
Skate America will be held in Ontario, California, much to my chagrin.
Evgeni Plushenko has been training and working on quad salchows and loops and is hopeful that his ban from ISU competition will be lifted in the near future.
A new article on Nathan Chen. So looking forward to seeing him in the future!
Adelina Sotnikova won the ladies title at Junior Worlds, with Elizaveta Tuktamishiva & Agnes Zawadzki winning silver and bronze, respectively.
Andrei Rogozine of Canada won the men's event, followed by Keiji Tanaka and Alexander Majorov.
Sui and Han defended their World Junior title, despite lingering questions about the formers age eligibility. Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov & Narumi Takahashi and Mervin Tran rounded out the top three.
Ksenia Monko and Kirill Khaliavin won the World Junior Dance title by a large margin, winning the gold over Ekaterina Pushkash and Jonathan Guerreiro and Charlotte Lichtman and Dean Copely.
As far as just the skating goes, Evgeni Plushenko. Don't get me wrong - I used to be a big fan of his pre-Torino, but starting that season I really lost interest in his skating. The arm flailing doesn't cut it as far as artistry and footwork go, and it's really a shame, because I thought in some years prior that he had at least some semblance of artistry in him, but from 2006 onward it was just jumping and flailing of the arms. Of course, Evgeni probably had some of those problems before that, but I don't think they were as noticeable. I'm sorry to say that he was pretty fortunate to get what he did in Vancouver; most skaters who had had that many scratchy or barely there jumps would have been placed lower than he did, especially if their programs were as empty as his transitionally (swiveling of the hips don't count as transitions or choreography ;) ). That said, Evgeni deserves a lot of credit for even making it to this past Olympics. It was certainly an admirable comeback after 3 years without competing.
This is one of his programs that I do enjoy.
Haha... that never gets old!
P.S. If you're a newer fan, you might not know about Phillipe Candeloro, a French figure skater who placed 3rd at the Olympics twice and had a penchat for taking his shirt off in skating exhibitions. In the video above, Plushenko is doing a parody of that and other "macho men" skaters.
