Skating Passion

Elena Radionova is awesome

Just a short post while I’m too busy once again to write some high quality, deep and beautiful stuff :)

I watched just a bit of junior world championship which took place past weekend and I must say once again that Elena Radionova is absolutely awesome. It’s not that rare to see a technically brilliant junior skater, but it’s really rare to see one with that developed musicality. I can’t really recall anyone close to her at that age. She’s like the best in everything.

This time you should definitely watch, at least, her FS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnlHq18c0Fk

In my previous entry about Elena I talked about the music from her SP. Right now let’s talk a bit about music from this FS. It’s a composition written by a Russian ex-singer (pretty bad at that) Dmitry Malikov turned a composer (pretty great at that) and you can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rESdJlknm-g

It’s a great music for skating and very interesting choice for a program. Wish we would see more of a modern instrumental music like that in figure skating.

By the way, the whole junior ladies podium is composed of Russians. And the whole men podium is composed of Americans. Not bad, not bad…

Some thoughts about Russian nationals

I think overall this competition was less exciting than GP series, obviously.

Among men, it’s true that Russia still doesn’t have a very strong lead aside of Plushenko, so we should be grateful that he is still competing. Thinking about it, it is actually so remarkable how much he gives to the sport and competition. For some reason I’d like to compare Plushenko to Mick Jagger, because they both are living legends, they both have to fight against their age to continue doing what they want to do and they both rock until this day. Now, this may seem weird because Plushenko is just 30 years old and Mick Jagger is 69 :), but in a sport like figure skating, being 30 years old and still competing against young skaters is very remarkable. Of course, there are senior competitions too, but Plushenko still wants to rock in Sochi, and I believe he’ll able to do that.

I am very, extremely satisfied with the result in ladies competition. Of course, partially this is because Elizaveta Tukhtamysheva is one of my favourite skaters and it ended extremely well for her. That kid was so exhausted, in fact she was already so tired after GPF, that I would be happy for her just because she would be able to rest a bit after this competition no matter the outcome. But somehow she found a bit more strength, I don’t know where she got it, and she did it so well that she became a Russian national champion. This is awesome and I’m really happy that she ended this year achieving this result.

Elena Radionova ended on second place, this is great result for her too and she is really great skater. I already talked about her and her programs for this season a bit. By the way, technically she was the best in FS, which should not be a surprise, she was totally clean and it was a performance that I would highly recommend to watch.

Finally, Adelina Sotnikova ended third. There are people who say that she is the best among young Russian skaters, I have no objection to this, even though I think that any of their top skaters could be considered the best… She is great all around skater and she has great potential. Recently she has some instability on jumps, but that should pass, so look for her too.

I think those 3 skaters are really, really good and all of them totally deserved their medals.

So that’s all I can say for now about performances on Russian nationals. Maybe we’ll talk a bit more about them later.

A great junior skater: Elena Radionova

Yet another short post, but hopefully there will be some more lenghty ones in the near future :)

Today while scanning Goldenskate forums I found a new thread about Elena Radionova, so I thought it would be nice to recommend her in my blog. I don't watch juniors usually, but some of them are so exceptional that it is a good idea to look at them just for the sake of skating enjoyment. Elena is very remarkable by her results this season - she won everything that was possible to win, but what calls my attention are not her medals, but the quality of her performances.

Like many other top junior skaters, Elena has rock solid jumps and supernatural spins. Unlike many junior skaters she actually feels the music and her programs are really, really good. For a 13 years old girl she is really exceptional in this. The only one I can think about who could be comparable to her at that age was Sasha Cohen. So this is indeed something very special and you should totally check out her performances if you didn't already.

Here is her SP for this season: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRsU6MTPK6Y

It's incredibly good music cut, by the way. You'll probably easily recognize parts from "The Fifth Element" in the second half of the program. The first part, on the other hand, is a remastered version of the intro of song called "Ah!... Par les dieux inspires..." from "Lakme", an opera by Leo Delibes. The remastered version is called "Carmelita Lounging". The same vocal part also appears in a song called "Bell song" from the album "Coco de Mer". Well, this is just for those of you, who want to enjoy more of that magnificent music :)

And here is her LP, equally awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ8yUoJlx2Q

Watch out for her 3Lz-3T and 3F-Lo-3S.

Overall, she is just great all around skater with no weaknesses at all actually. And another good thing for that kid is that she is not eligible for Sochi olympics, so her psyche is fine, because she is not being constantly bothered with them. Good for her.

It is impossible to predict what will happen with this or any other junior when they'll become seniors. But I think we should definitely congratulate that girl and enjoy her awesome skating. In the junior skating world, she is definitely one of the best.