#2017aci

I took a red-eye flight to Montreal and landed early Thursday morning and met up with some friends when I landed around 8 AM. This left me enough time to get to the first senior practice session for ladies and caught most of the competitors. One of the first things I did was hung the banner I made for Helsinki (which they never put up during Worlds), but I later moved it. There were quite a few banners already hung up and probably 95% of them were for Yuzu.

For the ladies the two top competitors were Mai Mihara and Kaetlyn Osmond. I fully expected Osmond to win here, but that Mai may have a chance to take the title if she skated clean and Kaetlyn didn’t. I’ll write more on the ladies SP at the end as it was the first senior competition to take place on Thursday.

Next came senior dance practice and I only stayed for the first group as I was getting hungry. Canada’s top three dance teams were all competing at this competition so the results were pretty predictable for dance, but it was fun to see the debut of new programs.

After taking a break to get food at the Tim Horton’s nearby we hung around the lobby looking at some sample garments that were on sale and noticed there were quite a few people standing around the staircase and realized they were probably waiting for Yuzu to arrive, so we tried to sit down on one of the nearby benches to see if we can wait and see him arrive as well but we got shoo’d away saying that area was only for skaters. To give you an idea of the increase in amount of people at the event, last year 4 of us were able to stand in the lobby and we did see Yuzu enter from the front door. That’s when I made this fun GIF:

This year, Autumn Classic did more official ticket sales through Event Brite (although it seems like they never figured out how to do the QR code scanning), the year before you emailed someone to reserve your ticket. I think the fact that they did official ticket sales, and that Yuzu wasn’t going to be at Skate Canada this season, and all his other events are so difficult to get tickets to spurred many fans to go to Autumn Classic this year.

Anyway, we made our way up the stairs and waited around with the crowd. At one point I counted 80 people within my field of vision just standing around waiting, you can see the size of the crod in my photo. We probably waited about 45 minutes (some were waiting even longer) and later I heard one of the girls on the stairs say he wasn’t coming in Mandarin so the crowd dispersed. I’ll just mention that it was pretty hot in Montreal so standing in this spot was both warm and sunny. We did see Misha (welcome back!) and Brian walk through, when Brian came by everyone got excited. I had joked before that with the size of this crowd that I felt Yuzu probably wouldn’t just waltz through the door like last year and that he would probably come in from the back.

As Brian was talking to the staff below I thought they were making arrangements for Yuzu to enter, but I couldn’t really hear much - in retrospect Brian probably WAS a decoy because as soon as I walked back in the rink, who else was there but Yuzu doing image training near the Kiss and Cry during the pairs practice!

After Yuzu disappeared back into the halls we promptly took our seats again, after having eaten (and having coffee, since I barely slept during my red-eye) and gotten a chance to stretch my legs I was more than ready for the men to start their practice sessions.

This is where my memory starts to blur a bit as I’m not entirely sure which men practiced their SP and which practiced their FS on this day. So here are some cursory comments on the free skates:

Javi: I'm not a fan of his free skate ending with The Impossible Dream, choreography was fine, some nice moments.

Misha: Delighted he decided not to retire last season!

Andrew and Jordan Dodds: I will admit I can’t tell the two apart and constantly mix them up (I kept wondering if they were twins).

Harry Mattick had an “entertaining” routine to Nightmare Before Christmas.

It was nice to see Daisuke Murakami back on the ice, even if his results here weren’t great. He sure does love his permed hair.

Keegan Messing has good speed, he definitely has niche in terms of the type of programs he skates to that may not resonate with me, but he has a great energy.

It was nice to see Nam Nguyen getting back on his feet, he looks much better than when I last saw him in Boston.

One of the skaters had a Schindler’s List/Rachmaninoff FS, it was an odd mix of music.

So onto Yuzu, I think I mentioned that news of the sore right knee came out as I was enroute to Montreal via Vancouver and I was pretty nervous for him, I wasn’t sure how simplifying his jump content was going to work out. His first practice was a pretty mixed bag in terms of jumps, he looked VERY awkward forcing himself to do 3Lz and 3Lo at the beginning of Seimei in the first practice, he looked like he had to visibly pull out of rotation early, but had great height. He popped some jumps and also had some issues with the axel. It did feel like he was conserving energy this day and taking it a bit easier than I usually see him in practice. As for Seimei, he didn’t do a full run-through but I love the little changes to the movement and the step sequence. We’ll have to see if they change things up though as he only got a level 3 for his step sequence in the free. His overall body language in the program has more commitment than before and it definitely feels more polished, the jumps in the second half in particular feel linked together. I did see him set up for the first jump in Ballade no. 1 with a 3Lo at first, and then a 4S, so I knew he was probably going to do a 4S instead of a 4Lo in the SP (this was later confirmed by Japanese media).

At one point, Yuzu basically did a besti squat around nearly half the rink. Turns out he’d include this in his new cool-down routine and it looks very cool and elegant! I love watching Yuzu practice, you get to see him move in a way you don’t always get to see during competition. I highly recommend you try to see him live and go to watch practice if you get the chance.

At the end of practice Daisuke sort of came up behind Yuzu and put his hand on his back, it was a very “there, there” type of gesture, which again, worried me a bit given the knee news, but it came off as a a big brother type of interaction. As Yuzu left the rink he bent down to touch the ice as he normally does when he enters and leaves the rink. Only this time, he seemed to linger there a couple seconds longer than usual, which again, made me a bit nervous.

And that was it for practice! I ended up skipping the junior short programs in order to get dinner and returned part-way into the senior ladies free skate. I missed Courtney Hicks so I can’t comment on her SP, but here are some general comments:

Elizabet Tursynbaeva had a clean-ish SP, and immediately after Rin Nitaya skated to the same music, but with lyrics. Elizabet has recently taken to trying tanos and rippons with her jumps, I’m not sure I love the end result.

Mai Mihara skated a clean SP. I liked this program when I first saw videos of it from the summer shows. In person I think Mai’s delivery of the choreography needs more sharpness and commitment, I don’t think she’s fully comfortable with the movements yet and it does affect the performance and execution somewhat. I’m sure she’ll work on this and hopefully bring the program to the next level.

Kaetlyn Osmond skated her Edith Piaf SP again and scored 75. This is a great program for her and she easily deserved her first place, but I wish they had done some fine tuning for this program. I think it was identical to what I saw at Skate Canada and Worlds last season. As this is a repeat program I’d like her team to focus on bringing it to the next level and sharpening it, otherwise I’m not sure how much higher she can score with it.