Two for the Ice

In this outtake from Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam’s upcoming feature on Up the Ladder Sideways, the retired Olympians discuss their work choreographing and coaching junior ice dancers at the Mariposa School of Skating.

Intro and Outro:

Snapshot Stats: A State of Stasis?

Skate America provides an opportunity to follow up on our previous look at PCS trends for Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier -- as well as those for Americans Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, who have seen some mixed results over their senior career. While last year marked a breakthrough in their scoring threshold -- their first 100+ international free dance scores, for example -- they’ve also battled technical inconsistencies, a factor that has, fairly or not, affected “second mark” reputation for other teams. 

While both couples are scoring well relative to the vast majority of the field -- and relative to themselves, historically -- it’s also evident that little movement is happening here. For Hawayek and Baker, there may be a detriment to skating in the world’s deepest ice dance field, where for three straight years three teams have qualified for the Grand Prix Final and where the US has minimal need for any significant leaps among the next tier. For Gilles and Poirier, the question remains more intriguing, given the push in their scores even last season, after Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s comeback. If Canada’s top two veteran couples are suspected to retire in 2018, one might expect to see team #3 continue to improve in the rankings this year -- the conventional idea of promotions and pushes across the national levels, regardless of performance good or ill. This is especially key given the great drop-off after Gilles and Poirier in experience and scoring potential among Canadian seniors. But it is not, at the moment, the reality, and the team’s results this Grand Prix were the worst of their career since 2013.

Both the US and Canada may see departures at the top following the upcoming Winter Olympics, but to what extent will these couples -- both of whom are almost certain to have plans to continue -- benefit? One could imagine a higher scoring threshold for Hawayek and Baker, who are younger and still in the process of actively developing technical aspects of their skating, who tend to place more emphasis on program intricacy, and who are arguably stronger pure skaters as a unit than Gilles and Poirier, whose strengths lie more in the performance and interpretation aspects of ice dance but, as such, are also at risk of running afoul of the subjective aspects of judging. Likewise, Hawayek and Baker’s narrative may not be climbing, but it’s also not in decline. 

Snapshot Stats: A Curious Dip

The battle among four Canadian pairs for any one of three Olympic spots has been particularly heated this fall. The three teams behind leaders Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford have traded off short program scores, but technical ups and downs have done more to set a long program hierarchy for the time being. 

Lubov Iliushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch were the top-scoring Canadians at this years World Championships, and as national medalists each year of their partnership to date, have been considered strong contenders to make the Olympic line-up. A season debut at Finlandia Trophy reflected a slight drop in the program component score from last season’s Four Continents and World Championship highs, but this is normal enough for a new year’s start. It’s their obviously good international reputation that makes the drastic dip in their component marks at the subsequent Skate Canada International the more surprising. 

While the skate was far from their technical best, it’s also evident above that GOE -- assigned by the same judges responsible for PCS -- has not tended to smoothly correlate with components for the pair. No explanations are forthcoming here, but it’s a good sign for the couple that a steadier pair of performances this weekend at the Internationaux de France have brought their marks a bit more in line with the norm established last season.

Legend: 

Snapshot Stats: Blame Russia?

Much discussion was had regarding scores and placements across disciplines at this week’s Rostelecom Cup. One notable result was that for Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, one-time Grand Prix finalists who here ranked behind Russia’s top two couples -- as well as champions Maia and Alex Shibutani of the US -- and, for the first time since 2012 and 2013, finished off a Grand Prix podium. Gilles made little secret of her displeasure with the results and/or the scoring, and indeed, their PCS showed something of a drop from last year’s career highs. But is Russian favoritism to blame?

As of Autumn Classic International, their Challenger debut in Canada -- a usually very friendly terrain for the team -- PCS had already markedly declined from its 2016-17 averages of 34.51 in the short dance and 53.45 in the free. This may point to a new regressive trend for the couple.

Since this entry analyzing and critiquing the Ice Skating Association of India’s strategy with regard to international competition, the nation sent two skaters to this week’s JGP event in Poland: Nikhil Pingle, one of their more regular competitors, and Ishita Kapoor, a very young newcomer. Pingle finished last in his event, Kapoor 36th of 37 -- but both, it is very much worth acknowledging, put forward good faith technical efforts; though they have a way to go, they attempted or executed reasonable junior-level content and performed real choreography, particularly Kapoor.

And notably, on another point raised in that post, both are training outside the country -- Pingle at the Mariposa School of Skating, which has had recent success with skaters from non-skating nations, and Kapoor in Moscow. 

It is not appropriate to mock the efforts of a skater clearly trying their best in a high-pressure situation, particularly that of a skater with limited training resources, as is the case with one young woman competing at JGP Australia. 

But India, which has been an active ISU member since 2003, has already had at least one trailblazer lady in (American-born) Ami Parekh, who competed at 4CC three times and Worlds twice. Parekh trained in the US, as have some others on the list below among the better-scoring contingent, and this – training in a more skating-rich country than India currently is – is obviously key. No non-skating country has even the incentive to develop a program without significant success, and that success can’t come from limited ice time and limited coaching resources. (See the growth of skating achievement among southeast Asian competitors – and how many log time in the US and Canada. Indonesia’s Maria Blessia here had her own jump struggles, but notice the differences when you compare performance level and choreography.)

It’s also important to note that India has been participating in the JGP essentially since its entry to the ISU:

2016: Krishna Sai Rahul Eluri (22nd men, JGP Japan – total 13.09) Ananya Murthy Thiruvallam (22nd ladies, JGP Japan – total 15.54)

2015: Shreya Saha Dalal (26th ladies, JGP USA – total 51.70)

2014: Nikhil Pingle (22nd men, JGP Japan – total 32.27; 25th men, JGP Croatia – total 38.13)

2013: Anavi Tekriwal (assigned to JGP Mexico, ladies; withdrew) Nikhil Pingle (23rd, JGP Czech Skate – total 27.04)

2012: Andrew Fernandes (assigned to JGP Istanbul, men; withdrew)

2010: Yoniko Eva Washington (30th ladies, JGP Czech – total 73.60)

2009: Hounsh Munshi (26th ladies, JGP USA – total 53.99) Andrew Fernandes (assigned to JGP Istanbul; withdrew) Candida Damietta Fernandes (33rd ladies, JGP Istanbul – total 26.63)

2008: Yoniko Eva Washington (28th, JGP France – total 73.71; 24th, JGP Great Britain – total 79.95) Andrew Fernandes (31st, JGP Italy – total 44.35) Candida Damietta Fernandes (36th, JGP Italy – total 35.31) Hounsh Munshi (25th, JGP Mexico – total 60.94)

2007: Amar Mehta (15th men, JGP USA – total 70.55. Note: also competed at 2007 Junior Worlds) Andrew Fernandes (27th, JGP Great Britain – total 37.14) Hounsh Munshi (assigned to JGP USA, withdrew; 28th, JGP Germany – total 49.79)

2006: Ami Parekh (17th ladies, JGP Norway – total 91.04) Aadnya Borkar (21st ladies, JGP Taipei – total 22.63) Upasana Upadhyay / Aaron Saladanha (10th pairs, JGP Taipei – total 4.30)

2005: Aadnya Borkar (23rd, JGP Canada – total 28.77)

2004: Avantika Vaishnav (27th ladies, JGP France – total 13.49) Debarati Ray (17th ladies, JGP China – total 29.64) Nidhi Girish Salian (33rd ladies, JGP Ukraine – total 21.32) Aadnya Borkar (38th, JGP Germany – total 29.29)

Washington also competed at 2010 Worlds, and the Ice Skating Association of India sent athletes to this year’s Asian Winter Games, including Aldrin Mathew and Anup Kumar Yama (a successful roller skater) in ice dance and Pingle in men’s. With Pingle, it’s good to see one current case where a skater has been sent out on a fairly consistent basis, because this is also fundamental.

In past years, India actually had juniors who, though not exactly world-beaters, had the technical capacity to score on a par with skaters from other small countries. It seems that India has been working now to develop a more grassroots approach – utilize skaters with more immediate ties to India – which is good, but, again, will also still eventually require at least one of those skaters to leave India to train for any hope of regaining reasonable small-country achievement.

India’s recent skaters have in a number of cases been roller skaters first, which raises the question of why India’s skating federation has taken an interest to begin with in moving athletes from one very different discipline to the ice. By sending a handful of skaters out per year, this indicates some concern with participating in the world winter sports scene, which is a great thing – but by not adequately preparing those athletes for nearly anything but a last-place finish, it’s unclear what the end goal is. Funding is a tremendous and valid issue, but there also comes a time to ask where the line is between just being happy to join in, to little apparent end, and desiring even incremental progress – or is JGP participation, however unsuccessful, simply helpful in allowing India to maintain its ISU membership?

Snapshot Stats: Breaking Down Breakouts

This week, U.S. figure skating media hub Icenetwork released its fourth annual installment of the self-explanatory “Who will be ice dance’s breakout stars in...” series. And while any preseason prediction game is all in good fun, Two for the Ice wondered how frequently guesswork from the site’s contributors has actually translated into measurable success, or improvement, for a sampling of senior teams.

(2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17)

Let our first chart serve as a guide for the next two. The season preceding the “breakout” season is included for each team here as a benchmark. 

Scoring averages are based on scores only from major ISU events: the Grand Prix series, Europeans, Four Continents, the Olympic Games, and Worlds. Out of 20 potential “breakouts” across the seasons, scores increased 80% of the time. The notable exceptions? Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue in 2014-15, dropping from 154.81 to 152.30; Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen in 2015-16 (153.38 to 146.47); Elena Ilinykh and Ruslan Zhiganshin in 2015-16 (157.25 to 156.01); and Anastasia Cannuscio and Colin McManus in 2016-17 (141.04 to 140.32). In each case but the last, these drops actually coincided with a team’s first appearance on the breakout list.

But what the trendlines of the scoring chart actually tell us is that scores in themselves have simply increased year-to-year in the Pyeongchang quad. It’s obvious given the frequency with which new records and new personal bests have been set season to season (or event to event), but it’s especially illuminating when juxtaposed against changes in national and/or international placement for these couples -- the measurement that really assesses how great a breakthrough each has made.

Out of 16 senior national placements considered here -- those for teams from the competitive countries of Canada, USA, and Russia -- “breakout”-season teams dropped by at least one spot, from the preceding year, on 5 different occasions. In another 4 cases, placements remained unchanged from the previous season. And while Cannuscio and McManus, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, and Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier all saw temporarily improved fortunes, their placements would drop in a subsequent “breakout” season. 

Things are bleaker at the World level: on only one occasion apiece did Chock and Bates, Gilles and Poirier, Hubbell and Donohue, and Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin improve their placement from the preceding championships. For the first three teams, subsequent placements would drop, while Stepanova and Bukin’s improvement from 11th in 2016 to 10th in 2017 was still lower than 2015′s 9th.

24 hours.

Though Skate Detroit will mark a competitive debut for U.S. pair Winter Deardorff and Max Settlage, it's also the culmination of nearly a year's preparation.