In the past two weeks, the main skating news has revolved around two of the biggest pre-season events in the northeastern US, one in Philly and one in Massachusetts. Personally, I think both of these events fell a little...flat? I'm hoping that skaters use these experiences to spice up programs a bit, but few performances really stood out for me. Musically, a lot of the choices seem too on-the-nose or too snoozy or too overdone. Not to say that there weren't some great outings, but...oh well.
1. Gracie Gold?
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love and support Gracie Gold. She's one of, if not the most, powerful and naturally talented figure skaters to come from the US in the past decade, and watching her ups and downs (mentally and physically) over the last 4 years has been both devastating and uplifting. I'd say her performances two weeks ago in Philly were the latter. Coming off of an okay Nationals in January, this is the best Gracie has looked in years. She landed a strong triple lutz-triple toes in both programs, had a clean short, and, even as the energy waned at the end of the free skate and she started to double jumps, everything seemed much more controlled. Like she knew she was going to double them, and held it together so that she could still be as clean as possible. It looked so much less timid. I don't know, maybe Gracie has a shot of putting herself back into a top US ladies group this season. (And selfishly, I hope this earns her a spot at Skate America).
2. The Isabeau vs. Lindsay battle begins
In Philly, we also got to see Isabeau Levito and Lindsay Thorgren, the two US junior powerhouses now turned senior, battle it out for first place. Isabeau got the win here, but I think it was very interesting to see them skate side by side again. Isabeau has such beautiful arm placement and pizzaz and performance that just seems so natural and exciting, but her jumps are scary and sometimes the choreography looks slow and a little frazzled. Lindsay comes off as a more powerful skater with better technical abilities, but sometimes those abilities slip, and she doesn't have the performance quality Isabeau does. And, while it was hard to tell if anything has changed due to the camera situation here, Lindsay's packaging has lacked in comparison to Isabeau's. Even having said all this, the main takeaway here was that the US certainly has two very promising new senior skaters this year.
3. Tara Prasad
I had originally thought about going to Massachusetts to watch the Cranberry competition this past weekend, but after seeing the lineup opted not to. And watching the replays, this seemed like a good choice. First off, I couldn't even find videos of most of the Men's performances, and from the looks of the scores I didn't miss much. And a lot of the Women's competition was truly a snooze fest. Amber Glenn looked untrained, with a severly awkward cartwheel fall (we need to stop cartwheels) and two popped jumps in the short program, not to mention a boring long program. Maddie Schizas struggled through her new free skate (even though I secretly liked the WSS theme okay). Audrey Shin won, and while I liked both her programs and costumes, I really couldn't tell you anything about her performances- they just weren't ~giving~, as some would say. And most of the other skaters either had boring performances or fell all over the place.
Except for Tara Prasad. I remember Tara from a smaller international competition last year, and her two performances in Boston this weekend represented everything I love about skating- landed jumps, musical choreography performed with purpose and energy, and the look of someone who loves what they're doing! She may lack in finesse and skating skills (although I'd say, even so, she was HIGHLY underscored here), but it's exciting to see India be represented on a scoring sheet and it's exciting to watch someone who's giving it their all, and doing it joyfully.
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