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Milan Olympics Recap: Men · The Rocker Skating Podcast

0:05
Welcome to the Rocker Skating Podcast sponsored by John Wilson
0:08
Blades. We have another doozy for you
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today. It's the men's recap and I just
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came back from a Saga forum and I am still in shock.
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Shock, in fact, is not even the word for it.
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That's that is an understatement to what I just witnessed, what
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we all just witnessed in the men's free skate.
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And I will try to formulate words as to what happened on
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this Friday the 13th of a men's free skate.
1:03
I'm going to start off with the obvious, which is what happened
1:07
at the end of the day. After the men's free day, the
1:14
Olympic champion is Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shyderov.
1:23
Let that sink in for just a few seconds.
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Silver medalist is the perennial silver medal king Yuma Kagiyama,
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and the bronze medalist was Shun Sato.
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Elia Molinen finished in 8th place.
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I don't really know how to put all of this into words, but I
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have been saying this on Twitter, which is that in my
2:04
lifetime of figure skating fandom and watching so many
2:13
competitions and so much of everything, I have never ever
2:24
seen such a shocking result at the Olympics.
2:31
Now I wonder if I have ever seen such a shocking result in
2:35
another competition. I I will have to go back into my
2:38
memory bank. But at the Olympics, I, I've
2:42
never seen anything like this. And I'm not sure if anybody else
2:46
really can say that they have seen anything like this.
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And when I said that on Twitter, there are a lot of people who
2:56
said, oh, but Nathan 2018, or oh, but Michelle in 1998, or oh,
3:04
but Alexei Ermanov in 1992. Well, 1994, we'll talk about
3:08
that in a little bit. But no, no, this is not just
3:13
about Ilya Molinen not skating how we expected him to skate.
3:19
This is about the fact that Misha Scheiderov won the
3:24
Olympics. This is a guy who was not even
3:28
in the conversation for the podium.
3:32
I mean, there might have been some folks who who may have
3:36
said, OK, he has a chance for bronze, but the fact the fact
3:48
that he beat everyone and won Kazakhstan's first ever figure
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skating Olympic gold, it is just stunning.
4:08
And I have no words for how shocking this win is.
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Again, you give me all the examples you want to give me.
4:18
Sarah Hughes 22,000 two, She had a shot.
4:25
She was in the conversation for for a medal, for sure.
4:29
Misha Shideroff has had an entire season of trying to
4:36
figure out how to regain his form.
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An entire season. I there just, there just was no,
4:48
there was no anything as to what could be a comparison to this.
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And I will compare this also to Alexa Armanov in 1994.
5:03
Again, not as shocking of a result, at least to me, but
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Alexa Armanov in 94 was a podium contender but certainly was not
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one of the favourites. And that was the Olympics.
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If anybody remembers or anybody needs a a primer on that
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Olympics, that was the Olympics where Brian Boitano and Victor
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Pachinko came back after retiring because they allowed
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professionals back then, professionals to be able to
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skate at the Olympics again. That was like the reinstatement
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of amateur. And so there were a bunch of
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skaters who took advantage of that and they were back.
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And also Kurt Browning, who was the reigning world champion was
6:02
also there. And there was Elvis Storko and
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there was Philippe Candeloro, world medalist.
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And it turned out that leximer Ermanov won that 94 Olympics
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over all these guys. And guess who Bisha Shideroff's
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coach is? Alexei Hermanov.
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There was a little bit of a Deja Vu in that.
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And so it was very, very interesting, the parallels.
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Oh boy. Let me get start with how this
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men's free skate started. And by the way, this is now the
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2nd result at the Olympics that has been no really the 3rd
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result at the Olympics that has been that has made a lot of
6:57
people talk. Team USA over Team Japan made a
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lot of people talk. Forney Beaudry, Cicerone over
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Chalk and Bates made a lot of people talk.
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This is so much more than either of those, and I'm going to try
7:17
to make sense of it. But you know what?
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I'm not going to deprive you or the skaters before the final
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four of what we also witnessed, which was some really good
7:30
skating. Like literally, we went into the
7:34
final group feeling like menning was kept at Bay.
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And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about,
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menning happens very often, and it's been the term that we have
7:50
coined over the past few years for results that are just all
7:57
over the map, usually because of inconsistent skating and
8:06
meltdowns and sometimes because of really good skating.
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And so there's positive many and there's negative many and there
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is there was a lot of that men in going on here.
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So we're going to talk about that.
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OK, you know what? All right, start from the
8:25
beginning because the first group was really fun.
8:32
And we started off with one of the feel good stories of the the
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the men's event, which was Yushang Lee, who made it to the
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Olympics by the skin of his teeth and then made it to the
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free skate here by the skin of his teeth and then skates
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probably the finest free skate of his career to lead off the
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men's free skate. And we were so excited about it.
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I don't know why he wasn't so excited, but I thought he would
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be jumping up and down. But he was so good and he that's
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he we let off with that program. And then Donovan Carrillo came
9:12
on and skated a really, really good program.
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And you know, we got the first two out of the way and the first
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two skaters scored over 140 points in their free skate and
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we're off to the races. We thought things were looking
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up. And then Cal Mura came on and he
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was as as you remember, he was the one who was an outside shot
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for the podium and has has had such a a roller coaster season,
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but comes in as the four contents champion and had a
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disastrous short program. And this was his redemption and
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he had a redemption skate. He fell on a what?
9:59
He fell on a quad Sal, but skated very well otherwise.
10:05
And frankly, I thought he was robbed of his component scores.
10:09
You know, he ended up with like a one what you know, like a with
10:13
A1170. And I thought that that program
10:17
should have easily gone into the one 80s.
10:20
And if it happened a lot, the last group or even the second to
10:23
last group, it probably would have.
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But you know, he he had his redemption skate.
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He ended up finishing 13th and it was it was a really good,
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really good start to the, to the, to the men's free skate.
10:40
And we we kept going and Lucas Britschke skated, Sasha Selevko
10:46
skated. They were both very good.
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Somehow both of them also just like messed up the last two
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jumping passes and and couldn't couldn't capitalize on how well
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they started. And then Matteo Rizzo came on
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and had has had a lot of trouble with his quad toe.
11:09
Today he was going over it again and again and again and in the
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practice beforehand and just couldn't get it.
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And that was what happened in this free skate here.
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Doubled the quad toe but then skated the rest of it clean.
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And you know, he, he, he whatever you say, right?
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He will always be the guy who who LED the Italian team to a
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historic team bronze medal and he will never forget that freeze
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gate at that point a few nights ago.
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And this frankly was icing on the cake for him.
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And he had he's had his moment. He and he had another moment in
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this men's freeze gate. And it was really just it was
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fantastic. Great to see him skate well, not
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his best, but he finishes in 15th and, you know, third
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Olympics and you know, he, he was, he was very good there.
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And then we had a few others who were, who were, who were really
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just like they, they, they laid it down.
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Nica got say the European champion had a fall on his
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opening quad last, But then the rest of the the program he
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fought for and he was the one who was leading the way for
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quite a while. Pierre Gumenek skated well.
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But again, much like a short program, this this program he's
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skated many times and he was much more used to the
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choreography. So he wasn't, it wasn't like he
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was piercing together a new program like he did in the short
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program. And you saw that happening.
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It was like a bit of his old short, a bit of improvisation,
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just trying to get it all together.
13:00
This one was a good program. He, you know, he's known for
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interpreting the music. There's a lot of the Russian
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choreography miming that we are we have been used to seeing.
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But his his skating was still small.
13:16
There was a lot of circles, tight circles, both in his jumps
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and in his overall ice coverage. But he's got to be satisfied
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with the way that he skated. What was it, 5 quads, 2 of them
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called AQ and then his triple Axel was called an under.
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That cost him a good 12 points I think.
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And he ends up in, where did he end up?
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He ended up in 6th place. He, he, he overtook Nica Gatsi
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at that point and, and got himself into that upper group
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after a, a little bit of a disappointing short program.
14:03
So that was sort of how we went into the last 10. 10 skaters.
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Was it 1012345678910 the last 10 skaters?
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Steven Gogolev Gogo Levisance continues.
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He has now skated 4 very good programs at his debut Olympics
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and he finishes in 5th place. He was top five at these Olympic
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Games and you've got to love his trajectory and he's still young.
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You you certainly would have thought that he would think that
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he will continue for the next 4 years.
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And now that he's not injured anymore and he's able to have
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that confidence, I think the Sky's the limit for him.
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And, and the next four years, hopefully is going to be really
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good for him. I just, we just, we just keep
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going here. I mean, this is, this was the
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momentum that we're seeing, right?
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It was, it was not that skaters were faltering.
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It was that they were building on top of each other.
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Because right after Stephen Gogulev, Whoosh and Sato and
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Schun skated a very good program just to for whatever reason
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today there, there was a curse of the last two jumping passes.
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His last two were just a little shaky.
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And it wasn't the skate that he had in a team event, but it was
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also very good. He then overtakes the lead over
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Stephen Gogalev and we got 8 left to go.
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Andrew Torgashev skates a a a very good skate.
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Kevin Amos. We thought this was the last
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skate before the final group. We thought when we saw him pop
16:02
the quad toe at the beginning that this might have been
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another one of those potential spirals.
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But he held it together. He it was a lot of fight in this
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free skate. He held onto a lot of stuff, but
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he did himself proud as well, getting himself just through a
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program that was very difficult for him because everything was
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just a little bit off. Torgeshev and Amos finish in the
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top 12 and that was how the first three groups went.
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It was pretty good and and we went into the final six with
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Shun Sato in the lead with a 27490, Stephen Gogulev in second
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with a 27378 and Peter Gumenek in 3rd with a 27121.
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It was very close amongst the top three.
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But you knew you looked at those scores right?
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270 you and you look at the rest of the six, 270 is is a there is
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no problem for these guys to get two 70s or so you think.
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And then Friday the 13th decided that it was going to come around
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Jin Sasha, Jin Sato Jinwansha let off the group.
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And he, he had, he had a, he had a very good skate with the
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exception of a quad toe that he fell into the boards with.
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And he, he was, he was very much a speed skater on that one
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because he fell into the boards. The boards sort of bounced a
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little bit because it was a speed skater boards that that
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help speed skaters when they fall, not injure themselves.
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But it was a little bit of a a jarring fall, but it was fine
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hit the rest of the program was fine.
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He had a beautiful, beautiful quad sow I think there was one
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queue called on his triple Axel, but he skated well.
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He he did himself a lot of favors and I thought he was
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going to go into the lead, but the the queue and then I think a
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couple levels, one level actually kept him from
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overtaking Shun Sato. And so he goes into second by a
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point, right, 27490 for Shun Sato at this point and Jin Wan
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Cha with a 27392. Those are your top 2 going into
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your final 5. Here comes Mikhail Scheiderov.
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I'm going to set the stage because Misha Shyderov has.
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It hasn't been an easy road for him this season.
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He has sort of just been a little bit lost.
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He's been trying to find his programs.
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He's been trying to find his consistencies.
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And you have to remember he was silver medalist at last year's
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World Championships, right? There were, if you rewind back
19:24
six months, he was certainly in the conversation for like, an
19:31
Olympic medal, right? But then you kind of looked at
19:34
his season and you said, OK, everything was just a little bit
19:39
off. And he couldn't figure it out.
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He couldn't figure out his programs.
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He couldn't figure out his consistency.
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He couldn't figure out his rotations.
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He was he had a bronze and a silver on the Grand Prix and he
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ended up sixth in the Grand Prix Final with with a not very good
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short program and an OK free skate and even at 4 continents.
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2 Two weeks ago 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago now where it was Cal
20:07
Mura who won and Jim Wancha who was second, you know.
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He was fifth. He, he was, oh, he was, he was
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fine in that competition. But there was nothing out of any
20:25
of those competitions where you would have said, hey, Misha
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Shyderov is in the conversation for a medal again, bronze at
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best, maybe because menning happens, right?
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And so that's how we started and Misha Shideroff comes and
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delivers. The one thing that he had was a
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step out on his quad Lutz. And this was not an easy program
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for him either. I mean, technically very
21:01
difficult, right? But there were things in this
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program that were a little bit off axis, a little bit off of
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what he usually would be. Even that opening triple Axel,
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half loop, quad S cow, the triple Axel went off a little
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bit weird and he saved that whole jump sequence with a 1/2
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loop that was a stabilizer and the quad S was no problem.
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He went on to then land three more clean quads.
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So he had four clean quads and A and a quad and a quad flip.
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No, sorry, and a quad Lutz that was that was a step out.
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Everything else was great. He this was the best skate of
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his season. And he couldn't believe it when
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he when he finished and he just, he just, he just couldn't
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believe it, right. He just, he was, he was there.
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It was like I did it. It's the Olympics, who knows
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what's going to happen. And, and he went into the lead
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and onto the leaders chair, right, because he went 17 points
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over Shun Sato. And and that was the stage that
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was set for the final four and then for the final four happened
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and Friday the 13th really happened.
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Adam Salhimfa. Oh, sorry.
22:39
We're going to be we're going to start off with Daniel Grossel.
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Daniel Grossel held on to a bunch of stuff.
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The quad Lutz was a hold on the triple Axel triple toe was a
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hold on stepped out of a a triple Lutz held on to his final
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combination. It was a lot of struggle on that
23:00
in that program and it was grades of execution sort of out
23:03
the window. And he then drops behind Peter
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Gimenek with the last three to go.
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And you thought, you thought the last three were going to give
23:18
you some epic skating. And Adam Sales came on 1st and
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he had a very good warm up. He had a very good practice this
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morning. He was ready.
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He looks refreshed. He felt like this whole Olympics
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while he's been here, he has looked like himself again.
23:40
And he took off completely wrong on the quad lust on the quad
23:45
Lutz and fell and also slapped his hands so hard on the ice
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that he there was a cut on it. And you could see him get up
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from that Lutz and like, hold on to his, I think it was his right
24:01
hand. And in my mind, I was like, oh,
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no, did he do something to his elbow?
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Did he do something to his shoulder?
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And he kept going and, and the whole time you're just wondering
24:12
what was going on. And he then just couldn't keep
24:17
it together. Quatto Quat Sao both had a step,
24:21
step out and a hand down. He really fought for everything.
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He he tried his best to salvage that program, but Adam Sai him
24:31
FA in flawless mode is effortless.
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He just there's there's nothing that he does in those programs
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when he's so good where you feel like he's he's muscling any of
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the jumps. But every single time he made a
24:47
mistake, the next jump was more muscled.
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Every single time he made a mistake, it felt like you were
24:53
seeing effort from him. And that was that was the mood
24:56
the entire time. And these mistakes just kept
25:02
being more and more contagious. And you know, it was, it was
25:08
just, it was just, you know, it, it wasn't what he wanted to do.
25:17
And you know, if, if you, if you had followed the warm up notes
25:24
that I had for the six minute warm up for the last group, you
25:27
will see that it was a pretty good warm up for, for everybody.
25:31
I mean, there, there weren't too many mistakes, there weren't too
25:34
many pops. Everybody was looking generally
25:38
fairly comfortable out there. So you, it wasn't something that
25:41
you, you saw as, as a thing. And, and a lot of people have
25:45
asked me about the ice conditions.
25:47
Nobody has said anything, at least to my knowledge, about the
25:50
ice conditions here. And certainly you had three
25:53
groups that skated very well and you had a warm up that went very
25:59
well and you had a first two skaters in the final group who
26:04
skated very well. So for folks to be blaming it on
26:08
the ice, I think it's disingenuous, but I don't know,
26:14
I, I, I haven't had a chance to talk to anybody else about the
26:20
ice because I beelined my way out of the, the arena to do
26:23
this. So I'll take a look, but I just
26:27
can't imagine that it is given how well everybody else has
26:32
skated. And it's not it's not like the
26:35
ice all of a sudden became bad in the last four skaters.
26:38
Like there's just like no way that that that would have been
26:41
the case. So then we kept going, right?
26:44
Adam goes behind Peter Gumenek and going into the final two, it
26:51
was Shun Sato, it was Jinwan Shah, and it was Stephen
26:56
Gogalev. Shin Sato, sorry.
27:01
It was Misha Shayarov and and Shin Sato and Jinwan Shah and
27:08
Stephen Gogalev. At that point, Misha Shayarov
27:13
realized that he won an Olympic medal and you could see.
27:19
You could see the, the, the shock in his face when Uma was
27:27
about to go out and he like he couldn't believe it.
27:33
Boy, oh boy, Misha, can you not believe then the rest of what
27:36
happened? Because Uma went out there and
27:39
he looked like he was going to just lay it down.
27:46
It like his his his warm up was fine.
27:52
He I remember looking at his face when he started his program
28:01
and there was this sense of calm, the sense of like, I got
28:05
this from Yuma and I really thought we were going to see a
28:11
flawless tornado here for the first time.
28:15
And right off the bat, his quad Sal went off access and he
28:19
stepped out of it. It wasn't a disaster for me.
28:22
Actually, it wasn't so much of, oh, he lost, you know, he was
28:28
going to go behind Misha necessarily.
28:29
I, I was like, Oh, well, that makes it a little bit easier for
28:34
Ilya to, to take the gold medal. And then he went and did the
28:41
quad flip, which was fine until he went on the heel and fell.
28:46
He landed the jump. We've seen these before, right?
28:49
He, he lands the jump. He's a little bit far behind on
28:51
the, on the heel. He's a little bit just swingy
28:57
and the momentum just gets him off the ice.
28:59
And so that was, that was the start of something of a
29:05
compounding set of issues. He kept it together, right?
29:10
The, the quad toe, he held onto it at the second quad toe.
29:14
He put his foot down. Everything was a bit of a
29:17
struggle, right? The, the, the flow wasn't quite
29:20
there. Triple flip, triple loop.
29:22
He put his foot down. He did manage to to keep it
29:26
together. The the triple axle at the end
29:28
was, was, was probably one of the best jumps that he did in
29:31
the program, but it, the program lost his magic.
29:35
And it was unfortunate because that was his shot.
29:40
You know, he even if he didn't put a whole bunch of pressure on
29:46
Ilya as as he was about to skate, at least he could have
29:51
put himself in a spot where he would guarantee himself at least
29:54
a silver medal. But the all those mistakes just
29:58
compounded. And I keep saying he was really
30:01
a quad flip fall or a clean quad flip away from going into the
30:08
lead because you would think that had he not fallen on that
30:13
quad flip, the the rest of the program would have been much
30:16
different. So that was how it went.
30:23
We go again. Misha Scheideroff 29158, Yuma
30:29
Kagiama 280, O 6. Shun Sato 27490 those were your
30:37
top three going in to the final skater.
30:45
And there was something a little bit so cheap 2014 about this
30:50
whole thing because it was sort of like at the end, who wanted
30:55
to win gold here? And nobody seemed like they
30:59
wanted to win gold. Misha Shideroff skated like he
31:03
wanted to skate a Glean program. I don't think there was any
31:09
there's, I don't think there was anything in his brain that said
31:14
to him at that point when he was skating that I had a shot at a
31:20
gold medal. I don't like he he was just
31:23
skating to put his best out there and that's what he did.
31:26
Ilia Molinen comes in with a 108 point short program.
31:33
And let's put this all also into context because this season he
31:39
has not scored lower than 306 points in any competition that
31:48
he skated in. And he had to beat a 290, right?
31:56
Even if you look at the the the team event where he had a
32:01
mistake in the short program, he's still finished with a
32:05
combined total of 298 points. And neither of those programs
32:12
were anywhere near at his best for him, right?
32:17
And so you came into this final skate, he knew what was going
32:24
on. Like he just heard Yuma go into
32:27
second place. That wasn't the pressure that
32:30
was going on. And then 4 minutes happened and
32:41
we witnessed something that I can only say was Ilya Molinen's
32:49
brain going on OverDrive because the quad flip that he started
32:55
with was just fine. And then he went in hoping,
33:02
right? The quad axle was the next
33:05
element. And the way that he went into
33:07
it, I don't believe he was trying for a triple.
33:10
I think he was going for the quad.
33:11
He did not do a quad in the warm up as I saw.
33:14
He did do a triple. That's what he usually does in
33:17
warmups. He will test his triple out and
33:21
make sure that that he's going off on the right axis.
33:24
All of those things. He singles the axle and I think
33:34
at that point his mind started racing.
33:39
Quadlitz was fine and when he did that I think everybody
33:46
thought he was putting himself back on track.
33:49
But the the problem was the 2. Two of the four jumps that gives
33:55
him the most inconsistency and problems were in the first four
34:00
jumping passes of the program. So there goes the quad axle
34:05
right into a single. And then he comes down the rink
34:08
and I actually don't know if in his mind he was like, I should
34:15
do a triple loop or if I should do a quad loop because he went
34:18
into that loop slower than he otherwise would have for a quad
34:22
loop, I think. And he doubled it.
34:26
And then you started going, uh oh.
34:29
Because it wasn't just the fact that he was not doing all his
34:34
quads, it was the fact that he wasn't doing the triples right.
34:39
Every single thing about this judging system is about adding
34:43
points together. And when you pop jumps, that is
34:48
when the disaster really strikes because you are losing all kinds
34:54
of base value. When he popped the the quad axle
34:58
and then he popped whatever was a quad loop or a triple loop, he
35:03
lost anywhere from 15 to 25 points just there.
35:11
In those first four jumping passes, he has a lot of points
35:15
to give, like a lot of points to give.
35:20
So at that point, even at that point, he had already landed 2
35:25
quads, 2 quads. That was really good.
35:28
He still had like 40 points of technical merit going into what
35:34
is the cash grab of his program, which is the final three jumping
35:40
passes. He backloads all three combos in
35:46
the second-half and you get just massive amounts of points for
35:51
those jumping passes and, and it was just like, what the heck are
35:58
you doing? And, and that was what his brain
36:05
was kind of going there with. So that that set the stage for
36:12
the final half of his program. And as soon as he fell on the
36:18
quad Lutz, it was over. There was just nothing he could
36:21
salvage because he needed all three of those final three
36:24
passes and he needed to do them well in order for him to to have
36:28
a shot at gold. And every single mistake that he
36:32
had was just points, points, points, points giving away hi.
36:44
So he falls on a quad. Let's he comes back and triple
36:49
of quad toe half loop triple flip it.
36:51
Same thing that he did in team event where he he was trying to
36:56
rack the points back up right with with with the jumps and
37:00
then it was it was another huge jumping pass that he can do in
37:08
his sleep. The quad sow triple Axel, which
37:12
is one of the hardest combos in figure skating.
37:18
He usually does with no problem at all, and he double s the sow
37:24
and falls on it. It was just, it was devastating.
37:40
You know what, whatever you think of any of these skaters,
37:45
you don't want anybody to meltdown.
37:48
You don't want anybody to be doing things like this.
37:50
It, it, it was, it was just one of those skates that I'm not
37:58
sure how you recover from that. And you know, Elia is young and
38:07
he will do as much as he can to get past this.
38:18
And you know, all that happened and he went into 8th place.
38:28
So it was, it was tough. It was, it was a really tough
38:31
watch. It was a really tough watch for
38:33
the, the last four skaters. Just you just don't, you didn't
38:39
know what to think at that point.
38:42
And, and nobody really knew what to think at that point.
38:46
The entire arena was in shock. The entire arena was like, it
38:52
was just like the air got sucked out of of the arena.
38:58
And so Mikhail Shideroff goes from the timeline of, Oh my
39:06
gosh, I skated so well to Oh my God, I'm going to get a medal to
39:15
wait a second. I'm going to get a silver to.
39:21
I'm an Olympic champion. Dennis, 10, has to be very happy
39:27
right now, wherever he is, because Kazakhstan, you know,
39:33
Dennis 10, you, you started, you started the inspiration for a
39:38
lot of kids, including Misha Shideroff.
39:42
And it was just, it's, it's, you know, it's heartwarming to, to,
39:51
to see him become the Olympic champion.
39:55
And, you know, I was, I was watching the whole thing from,
40:02
from the media stands. And Ilya, without blinking an
40:09
eye, as disappointed as he was, went over to Misha and and
40:13
congratulated him, gave him a hug.
40:16
And while Misha was just completely beside himself,
40:20
didn't know what was going on, and then 10 feet away, 10 feet
40:27
away was Yuma Kagiyama consoling Shin Sato because he just won an
40:37
Olympic medal. Yuma Kagiyama was the hype man
40:47
throughout all this. You know, he had to have been
40:51
disappointed with his skate. You know that in the back of his
40:54
mind, as everything was going on, he was like, I just missed
40:59
my opportunity. And instead of instead of
41:06
wallowing in his own thoughts, he was hyping everybody else up.
41:11
He was celebrating Misha. He was celebrating Shun.
41:15
It was it was so fun to to just see him there and off this off
41:21
to the side. I don't know if anybody saw
41:22
Kaori Sakamoto was there just like ecstatic for her team
41:27
mates. And there's a lot of joy amidst
41:33
the the the disappointment and the WTF of it all.
41:38
There was so much joy and you can't discount any of this other
41:47
stuff that happened because these three guys won Olympic
41:54
medals. Two of them were completely
41:59
unexpected. Well, I take that back 2.
42:03
Two of them were underdogs, right?
42:07
Misha Shatter of winning goal was completely unexpected.
42:10
Shun Sato thought he probably threw it away with the two
42:14
mistakes that he had, and this podium was joyful and it was.
42:25
It was great to see how that all worked.
42:29
The ice is slippery and it's lonely out there as a figure
42:34
skater. And a lot of these skaters
42:37
really did their very best. All of these skaters did their
42:42
very best to keep it together. And so that's your men's event.
42:52
Like Kyle Schneider off is your Olympic champion.
42:55
I saw him right before I left the arena, right before I raced
43:00
out of the arena. I, I saw him very quickly as he
43:03
was coming out of the rink and into the TV spotlights and he
43:09
saw me, gave me a smile, gave me a thumbs up and, and it was, it
43:15
was, it was, it was very heartwarming.
43:17
You know, he has to be so happy and so everything.
43:22
And his brain is still what I mean, you can see his eyes.
43:28
His brain was just still processing everything that had
43:31
just happened and just so just so great to see he like he was
43:37
just sort of in in disbelief. The Olympics does crazy.
43:43
Things. To people and to skaters.
43:47
And to. Everyone.
43:49
And today you saw what I said at the beginning.
43:54
Was probably. The most shocking results that I
44:00
have ever seen in my lifetime at the Olympics, if not more, I'm
44:06
sure we'll have. More to process over the.
44:08
Next few days, but we're only halfway through these
44:14
individual. Events we still.
44:15
Have pairs left and we still have the women left.
44:22
We have a week of skating to go. Before I finish off here, one
44:28
quick update. Deanna Stellato had her first
44:31
practice today in the practice rink.
44:35
Diana Stellato is here. Let's let's talk about the good
44:38
stuff after what we thought was a, an Olympics ending accident
44:46
at home. She made it to the Olympics and
44:50
she practiced at the Olympics and she looked good.
44:58
She and Max look like they were practicing like nothing
45:00
happened. So a bit of a Cliffs notes on
45:04
what happened with Deanna Stellato that that she told us
45:08
this is out of her own mouth was one.
45:11
She does not have a concussion. And she said she even said if I
45:15
had a concussion, this would be much more difficult because,
45:19
like, she has no idea how she would have recovered from that.
45:24
She said the accident happened about 10 days ago and she has
45:29
not had a chance to really process it yet.
45:33
But they got back on the ice three days after the accident.
45:38
She was cleared to get back on the ice three days after the
45:40
accident. She would not specify what the
45:43
accident is or what the injury is.
45:46
We do know that Skate Canada had said publicly that she had hit
45:51
her head in practice, but she got back.
45:55
Within within. Three days time, Max Deschamps
46:00
was still practicing while Deanna was recovering and she
46:07
had to basically come back and continue like the kind of start
46:13
from fresh, right? She had to slowly get back into
46:17
the swing of things because, you know, the doctors cautioned her
46:20
and she said they gave me an exercise to do that I had to do
46:26
5 to 10 times a day and I did 11 pure Deanna Stellato.
46:32
So, so she did that. They kept practicing.
46:37
They were, they were, she was being monitored by the Skate
46:41
Canada medical team every single day.
46:44
And she got cleared to come and, and she got cleared to be able
46:49
to, to, to come to Milano on Monday of this week.
46:56
And they flew out Wednesday night and they got here
47:00
Thursday. And their first practice was
47:03
yesterday, which was Friday. What else did she say?
47:12
She said she will, she will talk more about what happened when
47:17
she's able to process it a little bit more.
47:20
But she, she's she herself still doesn't really understand what
47:24
happened yet. And she, she wants to do that
47:26
before she's able to tell folks what, what happened.
47:32
She did say, and I quote, I have seen a lot of seen and heard a
47:40
lot of things out there from unreputable sources and most of
47:45
it has been incorrect. And so she wanted to set the
47:48
record straight here and her practice was again very good.
47:54
She was landing triple toes as she always does.
47:58
She was having trouble with her triple sow as she always does.
48:03
And she was landing throws. They were if maybe a little bit
48:06
tentative, but it was it was generally fine.
48:11
The twist was fine, the lifts were fine, the death spirals
48:14
were fine, the side by side spins were fine.
48:16
Everything that I saw. If you told me it was a regular
48:20
Deanna Stellato practice, I would have been.
48:26
I would. Believe you because because.
48:28
That's how she practiced today. So that's your Deanna update and
48:33
the Paris short program will be? Happening on Sunday.
48:40
So we have a day to. Process all of this again.
48:46
And we have a day of break and tomorrow will be a lot of
48:48
practice. So that's.
48:53
It from Milan for. Today we will continue.
49:00
To figure out what happened. We will never maybe figure out
49:03
what happened. I will have my wine and fries.
49:07
And this is Jackie Wong, chief skate nerd of rockerskating.com.
49:10
Thanks again to John Wilson Blades and all all its brands
49:14
for sponsorship. And thank you for our producer,
49:18
Tara Nichols, for making me sound like I am not completely
49:23
brain dead right now because I my brain is still exploding.
49:29
We will talk to you again soon. Bye.