u/bryse0n

Used Google Lens to translate so there are probably inaccuracies especially in their answers to "favourite skating element".

- Like Rino, Mone wants to be Ilia for a day, while Rio doesnt (maybe because he's gonna try to do that himself).

- Mone is good at peeling boiled eggs (please teach me)

- Rio likes perfume

Taken from her IG

I love how graceful and charismatic her movements are down to her fingertips, I just hope that gets rewarded in her scores this season...

Found this on tumblr and thought of it in the midst of Ilia suggesting he might take half a season off. At the risk of seeming parasocial, it seems Ilia's mental health has been suffering for a long time from dedicating his entire life to skating for so long and from COVID isolation. If he does take a break, I hope he can recuperate mentally and find some happiness outside of skating.

The reduction in jumping passes in the free skate from 7 to 6 next season seems to be targeted towards male skaters who win largely on jumps. The base values of spins and step sequences have also been increased. Will this actually make a significant difference to relative scores and placements?

As an exercise, I looked at the scores of the top 6 men from the GPF 2025, Olympics 2026 and Worlds 2026. I then made the following adjustments to scores:

1. The combo with the lowest BV in the free skate was removed. If this combo had previously received a latter-half bonus, the last jumping pass without the bonus received the bonus.
2. BVs of all spins and step sequences were changed to new values, and the Euler's BV was changed to 0.
3. GOEs and PCS were kept the same.

Results:

1. Scores of the "jumpers" (Ilia, Mikhail and Stephen?) did decrease by the largest amounts, but almost everyone else's scores also decreased, so placements did not change (except for Petr).
   1. This is likely because it is the lowest scoring combo that is removed, which usually results in a similar point decrease for everyone (except Ilia, the only skater whose lowest scoring combo contains a quad).
2. The largest decrease in a gold-silver point gap was at GPF 2025; the Ilia-Yuma gap changed from 29.88 to 17.81. This would still be very difficult for Yuma to overcome, all else being equal.

Conclusion: Jumpers will probably still keep winning. Ilia and Mikhail are not bad at spins and step sequences so the minuscule increase in BV does not disadvantage them relative to e.g. Yuma.

Huge caveats:

1. The effect of the choreographic spin was not included since it's impossible to predict how skaters will perform there.
2. Skaters may have changed their layouts completely this season if fewer jumping passes had been implemented.
3. Removal of a jumping pass in the FS might give jumpers enough stamina to do crazier quad+quad combos, 4 jump combos with the delisted Euler, improve their leveled elements or performance ability.

Data collated by pianofs on twitter, who analysed major ISU competitions (championships, GPs, CS) for Adam, Ilia, Yuma, Misha, Shun and Junhwan. Some interesting insights here, including that despite the ongoing narrative, Shun is not the most guilty of losing Stsq levels (sorry Misha you're still my GOAT). Ilia, meanwhile, has a better track record in his senior career than people would expect.

He's certainly versatile!