The big question here is: Will I manage to catch up with all of these Challenger events before the Grand Prix series starts? I’m done with the JGP and watched everything after Fake Open live, so that now leaves US Classic, Nepela, and Nebelhorn... we’ll see. Anyways, here’s some thoughts about the Men’s competition at Lombardia Trophy.
- Matteo: I’m pretty much going to repeat what I said after Shanghai Trophy here. I really love the short program - even though it didn’t work out that well for him this time. The free still doesn’t convince me, but maybe that’ll change as the season goes on. Congrats on bronze!
- Kazuki Tomono’s SP is really interesting and I like it a lot at first glance - even though pretty much everything went wrong for him here. Good comeback in the free, though! I didn’t think I’d like seeing another Moulin Rouge, but I was proven wrong once again.
- Boyang’s SP is really beautiful, but somehow I’m not completely “feeling” it just yet. Might be because it’s still early in the season. I like the free overall, but those heartbeat sounds still annoy me to no end. This is just me being nitpicky, though. They are good programs overall. Congrats on winning!
- I really liked both of Dmitri Aliev’s progams, which surprised me because I didn’t often like this programs in the past - but these new ones are really good and he performed them very well! Congrats on silver!
- Two other programs I really liked were Peter James Hallam’s SP to Footloose and Matthew Samuels’ FS to The Prayer.
Also, someone recently told me I shouldn’t complain about Rika’s scores in posts about competitions she wasn’t even in. So here’s a reminder that Rika Kihira deserves better than what the judges are doing to her at the moment :)