Ellen wrote:
You are so outraged by the jumps in the second half and the unbalanced programs. But the girls, at least, perform these jumps without falling !!!. The exception is Alina's one single start out of her total nine events.
Why are you silent about men who, in pursuit of points, perform the quads which they are unable to complete. That makes the program a set of pieces from one fall to another. From your point of view this is normal, whereas an unbalanced program is the horrible horror.
In the World's last warm-up, the 6 strongest skaters fell 14 times in sum!!! Why does no one write that something must be done about this? for example, limit the number of quadruples or to reduce their cost.
About those falls:
Shoma Uno had an injured landing foot but had to skate, since Hanyu was not there, and Japan needed him to place high to ensure Japan earned 3 spots for 2019 Worlds.
Boyang Jin seemed to be skating injured also. He had an injury early in the season which had healed, but likely doing Olympics and Worlds put strain on the old injury and reactivated it.
Mikhail Kolyada always has at least two falls on quads in his FS, and he did the same at Worlds.
Vincent Zhou must have injured himself in practice, because he has never had that many falls in a FS.
I would add that for all these men, the pressure of Olympics followed by Worlds and the long practices before each made them all more vulnerable to injury. And of course there was no mention of Nathan Chen, who landed six quads, five of them clean, with no falls.
Injury is something that should be considered when young teenage skaters are practicing quads. What happened to these men is something that could happen to any of the ladies as well. Perhaps it IS a good idea to limit the value of quads
especially for juniors because it would be a shame for a 13-14 yo skater to incur a career-ending injury without ever getting to Seniors.
Extreme backloading can also lead to multiple falls. If quads are re-valued and limited, then backloading should be also limited. Alina's FS performance at Worlds provides a timely example of the dark side of extreme backloading and the potential for injury.