Japanese Nationals - Men's Short Results

Well THAT certainly didn't go as expected! 

1. Takahiko Kozuka 87.91
2. Yuzuru Hanyu 78.94
3. Nobunari Oda 77.48
4. Daisuke Takahashi 74.78
5. Tatsuki Machida 73.75
6. Takahito Mura 72.33

From what I've gathered online, here is a summary how the top 4 skated. (If anything is wrong, I'll correct it once I've seen it and can confirm it.)

 Yuzuru Hanyu landed a clean triple axel, triple lutz-triple toe, and a triple flip.( Very good! It's nice to see him skate so well, he's definitely one to keep an eye on. Fuji TV's camera work was... interesting. It made it look like his donut spin was all over the place.)

Daisuke stepped out of his triple flip-triple toe, and had a shaky triple axel, but had a triple lutz that was fine. I didn't expect him to be under Yuzuru based on how Yuzuru was scored on the Grand Prix. I'm thinking he had something called underrotated or downgraded. (Upon watching, it is pretty evident Daisuke was not himself. None of the jumps were very secure and even the spins had trouble. It did look like he had the axel ,though maybe slightly underrotated, but then he flipped out of it. The second half of his combo looked underrotated in the replay too. In a Japanese article he said he's in a better condition than at the GPF, but his coach has alluded otherwise. :-/)

Takahiko landed a triple axel, triple lutz-triple toe, and a triple flip, all cleanly. (After watching... Holy cow! Those jumps were GORGEOUS! Definitely among the best I've ever seen him do. Good for him! I do still find it shocking that he hit 87 without a quad, but I've heard that he got level 4 on all his spins and the step sequence, and I guess the GOE was through the roof on the jumps, deservedly.)

Nobunari fell on his quad attempt, which was supposed to be his combo. He landed a clean triple axel and triple lutz-triple toe, but lost his balance and fell during the footwork sequence. (Ouch. Well, he did think on his feet this time and salvaged some points by making the lutz his combo.)

Unfortunately, it is definitely going to be an uphill battle for Daisuke to keep his title. Takahiko has over 13 points on Daisuke, so Daisuke's going to have to skate near perfect, sell it for everything it is worth and likely hope for mistakes by at least Takahiko.  Nobunari has his work cut out for him as well, if he wants the title, as he is 10 points behind the leader as well. 

As much as I love Takahiko, you can bet that I'll be praying for a Christmas miracle for Daisuke. :P

EDIT: Links added! Thank you to whoever sent them to me. 

P.S. Merry Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

Japanese Nationals - Schedule & Starting Orders

My sister was kind enough to convert the schedule from Japanese time to Eastern Standard time. =)

Friday, December 24th

Pairs Short 2:00 AM - 2:15 AM

Mens Short 2:20 AM - 6:30 AM

Short Dance 11:00 PM - 11:20 PM

Pairs Free 11:20 - 11:35 PM

Ladies Short 11:50 PM - 4:10 AM

Saturday, December 25th

Mens Free 4:05 AM - 8:00 AM

Pairs & Men's Awards 8:00 AM

Sunday, December 26th

Free Dance 1:00 AM - 1:20 AM

Ladies Free 1:30 AM - 5:30 AM

Ladies and Ice Dance Awards 5:40 AM

World's Team Announcement 7:00 AM

Monday, December 27th

Medalist on Ice Exhibition (Guests Stephane Lambiel and Evgeni Plushenko) 3:00 AM - 6:00 AM

Check on ontd_skating for streaming times (not live though).

Practice Videos 

1
2

(Sorry, I tried to embed them but they turned out huge and messed with the page a bit.)

Daisuke Takahashi, Takahiko Kozuka, and Nobunari Oda all seem to be in good condition - Daisuke told the press that his quad toe is inconsistent right now, but he might still go for it , but that if it is too unstable, he may try the quad flip instead. He does attempt a quad flip in one of the videos above and while I'm not sure it was fully rotated, I think it may have been more rotated than the attempt at the Grand Prix Final (though still two footed). Reportedly, the rest of his jumps are fine.

Also notable is that Mao Asada did land a triple axel in practice, but on the video it does look at least a little bit cheated.

Starting Orders
Mens Short

1	Ryuichi KIHARA
2	Yukihiro YOSHIDA
3	Sei KAWAHARA
4	Junzo NISHIGAMI
5	Yuya TAMADA
6	Yuki HORINOUCHI
7	Fumiya ITAI
8	Hiroki HABU
9	Ryujyu HINO
10	Kento NAKAMURA
11	Akio SASAKI
12	Jun SUZUKI
13	Hayato MIYAZAKI
14	Koshin YAMADA
15	Keiji TANAKA
16	Hikaru MURAYAMA
17	Junki SANO
18	Naoto SAITO
19	Yoji TSUBOI
20	Jo MATSUMURA
21	Yuzuru HANYU
22	Takuya KONDO
23	Kensuke NAKANIWA
24	Daisuke TAKAHASHI
25	Hayato ODAJIMA
26	Takahiko KOZUKA
27	Daisuke MURAKAMI
28	Tatsuki MACHIDA
29	Takahito MURA
30	Nobunari ODA
31	Yasuharu NANRI
32	Tomoyuki KORIYAMA

Ladies Short

1	Saya UENO
2	Haruna SUZUKI
3	Rumi SUIZU
4	Haruka INOUE
5	Nana TAKEDA
6	Shion KOKUBUN
7	Kana MURAMOTO
8	Juri OKAWA
9	Naomi TANIKAWA
10	Karen KEMANAI
11	Risa SHOJI
12	Kako TOMOTAKI
13	Aki SAWADA
14	Hikaru NASUNO
15	Yuki NISHINO
16	Risa MOCHIZUKI
17	Miyabi OHBA
18	Roannasari OSHIKAWA
19	Eri SETO
20	Risa SASAKI
21	Mutsumi TAKAYAMA
22	Ayane NAKAMURA
23	Shoko ISHIKAWA
24	Kanako MURAKAMI
25	Haruka IMAI
26	Miki ANDO
27	Mari SUZUKI
28	Akiko SUZUKI
29	Mao ASADA
30	Fumie SUGURI
31	Ayumi GOTO
32	Yuka KOUNO

Pairs Short
1Narumi TAKAHASHI/Mervin TRAN

Short Dance

1	Cathy REED/Chris REED
2	Emi HIRAI/Taiyo MIZUTANI

Universal Sports Article

I'm so excited!

Skating Updates

It is that time of year again - Christmas AND many countries national figure skating championships. While many have been going on, the most notable thus far (at least, to me) would be France's Nationals and the Czech Republic's (for the men, of course).

At the Czech Championship, Tomas Verner took the gold with 221.20 points after winning both programs, while Michal Brezina, whom is recovering from a fairly recent stomach surgery finished second with 202.76 points.

At the French Championship, Nathalie Pechalat (coincidentally, Verner's girlfriend), and Fabian Bourzat won the ice dancing title to no one's surprise, and by a margin of over 20 points. They finished with a total of 166.44.

In the men, Brian Joubert claimed the title with 231.85 points after Florent Amodio made several significant errors in the short program and found himself playing catch up. Florent did win the freeskate, but not by enough to overcome the 10 point difference between himself and Brian and he finished in second place with 222.55. Alban Preaubert and Chafik Besseghier finished in third (213.90) and fourth place (202.94), respectively. Even more surprising than Brian's victory may be the fact that he did not attempt a quad in the freeskate, although he reportedly did in the short.

While the U.S. Nationals are still a month away, the American men aren't being ignored - Jeremy Abbott recently talked with Universal Sports and talks about the Grand Prix season and Nationals, among other things. I would have to agree that Jeremy is the frontrunner for the men at U.S. Nationals, but I'm afraid that his mentioning that and feeling like he is the leading man in our country may jinx him, as there are certainly some others in the mix, such as Adam Rippon, Brandon Mroz, and Armin Mahbanoozadeh. (Though I don't, by any means, feel that Jeremy is getting arrogant.)

Speaking of Adam, Mr. Rippon has recently spoken to Lois Elfman for Ice Network about his holiday plans and has also written a new blog on his website with some insight about his experiences at Skate Canada and Skate America.

Don't forget, Japanese Nationals is coming up this week and along with it, plenty of excitement and many questions. How will Mao fare? Will Daisuke be back to normal? And how well the youngsters Kanako Murakami and Yuzuru Hanyu perform? I'm really looking forward to seeing the answers to those questions and more!

P.S. Anyone who happens to find/upload youtube videos of Japanese Nationals or comes across any interesting news about it or even the results (as it can be extremely difficult to find results online for other countries' nationals, though I think I know somewhere I can find them for this particular event), please feel free to share in a comment here or tweet me. Thanks!

EDITED 12/21: Practice groups and event schedules are up on U.S. Figure Skating's website and much to my surprise, Ryan Bradley has been listed in Practice Group B for the Senior men. I had no idea he was competing!