#eliška březinová

[beatrack92]

Eliška Březinová 🇨🇿

Beijing 2022 Olympics

[figure-skating-watch-party]

Santa Claus Cup, Budapest

“Small” comps are pretty amazing. It feels kind of more familiar, there are usually more local skaters or skaters from the neighbouring countries (which is even more true now) and you can get surprised by many skaters you’ve maybe never seen before. 

And I was totally surprised by Julia Lang. Have never seen her before but I’ll certainly rewatch her SP to André Rieu’s And the waltz goes on many times. The timing of the jumps to the music, the original step sequence 😍

I’m also happy that I saw Nikola Rychtaříková’s Yo soy Maria FP again, I love it. There are so many Spanish/Latin/flamenco/tango programs but I think she does a good job at the interpretation. 

Then I watched Eliška Březinová and just realized how goood she looks on the ice. She’s dramatic in her Never tear us apart SP and then calmer, excluding positive energy in her La la land FP. (it’s just so ironic, imagine finishing third in the short, third in the free and ending up fourth overall...)

The most important message from men singles. Iker Oyarzábal. Spain. I repeat: Iker Oyarzábal from Spain made his senior debut! And he got the TES minimum for Europeans in his FP (exceeding it by more than 9 points) and almost almost got it in the short. Let’s hope there will be some other comps where he could try it again. He skated to trusted figure skating classics: You raise me up and Moonlinght sonata. And he’s so elegant. His spins are awesome. He was not that expressive but he’ll learn that (and he did a hydroblade ;) )

And another note. Czech skating is not only Michal Březina and the Bělohradský siblings but also Georgi Reshtenko (well he’s Russian but whatever ;) ) He looks like he’s skating with abandon and feels so free on the ice.

Ice dance

A thing happened... The competition took four days with ice dance on day 3 and 4. There were four very looooong videos on YT, one for every day. I watched day 3 with rhythm dances... and then when I wanted to watch free dance, the videos for day 3 and day 4 were gone. So I haven’t seen a single free dance... T_T But I’ve seen rhythm dance at least!

Rhythm dance! Only two senior teams but another Cabaret! I love, I collect them ;) Jennifer Janse van Rensburg / Benjamin Steffan. It was a really entertaining performance comparable with Popova/Mozgov’s interpretation. And then Lara Luft / Maxmilian Pfinsterer skating, very energetically, to Anything goes. 

Junior ice dance looked like France decided to hold French open national championships and managed to occuppy the first four spots - even without their two best junior teams. As usual, I liked all the dances. 

Perhaps I liked Eva Bernard/Tom Jochum and their RD to Michael Buble the most. They are doing a pretty crazy lift and ending with the twizzles. That seems to me like an act of courage. 

Louise Bordet/Thomas Gipoulou’s City of stars is just so nice. Nice to watch from the beginning to the end. And I also liked the tap dance sequences in the music incorporated into the program. 

I was a bit confused about Celina Fradji/Jean-Hans Forneaux, I thought they skated their last year’s RD (Singing in the rain) at test skates and now, suddenly, Blue Brothers. But not bad at all. They didn’t look particularly thrilled in the k&c though, so I’m a bit nervous about them. 

And I still got to see my beloved Singing in the rain! Because it’s Marie Dupayage/Thomas Nabais’ RD! And they showed quite a lot of personality in the dance, especially towards the end. 

And I enjoyed Corina and Patrick Huber’s New York, New York, too. When compared to the French teams, their level was noticeably lower, but if you are not a levels counting and scoring overanalyzing analyst you can enjoy the pretty costumes, enjoy how cute the dance is and just be happy. 

And the last one was another siblings team - Petra and Patrick Csikós and their A nice walk in the park with a pretty acrobatic straight line lift. 

The only thing I can say about free dance is: there were quite some changes. 

[miss-mollys-ballet-blog]

Eliška Březinová, short program and free skate, Beijing Winter Olympics 2022.

Honestly she’s one of my favorites at the Games, even if she isn’t the best.

[rikeijo]

Today's translation #29

The making of characters

Sayo Yamamoto's comment

Emil Nekola

He is a person that doesn't hide anything and isn't afraid to try to do things. Even when he fails at something, he isn't bothered by the fail, so it's possible he will get even stronger [as a skater] in the future. Right now, he thinks only about jumps, so his artistry is still immature. Miyamoto-sensei told us that skaters of this type often have very stiff hands [while performing], almost as if their nerves didn't reach all the way to the ends of their fingers, and he took that into consideration when he was performing Emil's choreography for us. Nowadays, skaters who jump quads are often very thin, but in the past there were a lot of relatively beefy skaters. Emil is a skater of the latter type, so he has a muscular body. I also wanted to have a skater who would perform to European style of music, so we ordered electro music for him. The setting that he likes to do extreme sports in his free time was inspired by Patrick Chan.

Michele Crispino

He's an obstinate and serious person. He hangs out with Emil but the two have nothing in common. He's the type who pushes people away, because he tries to appear threatening - to not be looked down on, so he can protect his sister, Sara. He is friends with Emil, because Emil wants to hang out with him, and doesn't care about his attitude. The idea to create skater siblings was inspired by Michal Březina and Eliška Březinová. Michal, even when he himself competes, supports his sister from the side of the rink, when she's skating - this left a big impression on me. The idea for his SP music was inspired by skaters in armor-like costumes, who appear at Euros each year.

[sarakiz]

Eliška Březinová (CZE) - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Eurythmics (chor. Benoît Richaud)

Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 - Ladies' Short Program

[anewbeginningagain]

2022 Beijing Olympics - Team Event Review - Remining Countries

In contention for a medal: None.

Georgia, Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic all have only one entry in each discipline so it makes predicting their strategy easy :)

Team Georgia

Realistically the only country out of the four that has a chance to finish top 5 and to qualify for the FS segment. All four of their entries can perform well and if any country underperforms, Georgia it right there ready to take over. 

First (and only) Strategy - No switches:

Men - Morisi Kvitelashvili

Dance - Kazakova/Reviya

Women - Anastasiia Gubanova

Pairs - Safina/Berulava

Team Germany

First (and only) Strategy - No switches:

Men - Paul Fentz

Dance - Müller/Dieck

Women - Nicole Schott

Pairs - Hase/Seegert*

*With Seegert testng postivie for COVID today, there’s a big change Germany will have to withdraw from the team event.

Team Ukraine

First (and only) Strategy - No switches:

Men - Ivan Shmuratko

Dance - Nazarova/Nikitin

Women - Anastasiia Shabotova

Pairs - Holichenko/Darenskyi

Team Czech Republic

First (and only) Strategy - No switches:

Men - Michal Březina

Dance - Taschlerová/Taschler

Women - Eliška Březinová

Pairs - Zhuk/Bidař

[spacelessbian]

Czech Woman A Day (580) : Eliška Březinová (figure skater)

[figure-skating-watch-party]

Czech test skates

The video of the whole first day of Czech test skates was immediately blocked on Youtube which means I haven’t seen a single SP or RD... But I’ve seen all FPs and FDs I wanted! 

Senior men

Matyáš Bělohradský - The greatest showman He’s returning on the ice after almost a year, he attempted a 3A and his goal is to try to reach the TES minimum for Worlds this season, so all things considered we can’t want more right now. He showed what he could and I have to say he had some energy left until the end. Though I don’t like The greatest showman, the choreo and step sequences were, in fact, a lot of fun. 

There were only two participants, Michal Březina, quite understandably, skipped this as he lives in the US. So... everybody was expecting to see Jiří Bělohradský... and instead here is...

Leonid Sviridenko - Elena & Lila by Max Richter He’s considering switching to the Czech Republic, so he skated here... He showed 4S, 4T (with a fall) but also some doubled jumps... 

What is even more surprising than a Russian skater wanting to switch countries is Jiří Bělohradský wanting to switch disciplines. He’s apparently switching to pairs and looking for a partner. I can’t find any post by him himself but as per Twitter accounts and ice partner search it’s true. 

Junior men

There were also two participants. I can assure you that Damian Malczyk is still a Javi fanboy and skated his SP to Black Betty. In the FP he skates to Unstoppables and this program could work. There are nice moments in the choreography where he can interact with the spectators, there’s an interesting entry into the spin, this time unfortunately, there were too many doubles in the jumps. 

It was Georgi Reshtenko who stole the whole show and got the highest score among men, junior and senior. He’s still skating to Joker and he went all out. 4T (fall), beautiful 3A, 4T2T... It was a great skate!

Ladies

I didn’t watch juniors and watched two out of three senior ladies. 

Eliška Březinová was, a bit surprisingly, second after the short, she skated the FP to Circles inspired by Einaudi, choreographed by Benoit Richaud. This program really screams loudly Benoit Richaud. If I had to describe his choreographies with one word it would be “round”. A lot of weird bent “round” moves... (Idk I think Misha Ge is so far not that versatile choreographer but you wouldn’t recognize that a program was choreographed by him in the first five seconds as you do here.) I get it, skaters want something new, Benoit is modern, but in fact the field of choreography where he moves is so narrow (and than he does a masterpiece like Matrix for Kaori or a good program like Peaky Blinders for Gabriele Frangipani). I don’t think the music does Eliška justice, it’s weird, but also it wasn’t the best performance. She was studying for her final exams at university, got a master’s degree, so she didn’t have that much time for training... But the most important thing is that she is excited about the program and cooperation with Benoit Richaud. 

Nikola Rychtaříková - Final contest I was so happy for her, it was a good skate. Quite nice jumps, beautiful spiral, a cartwheel, great entry into the sit spin (she enters from this “heroic” almost- slide). I really really liked that. 

Ice dance

In juniors, Denisa Cimlová/Vilém Hlavsa withdrew and Kateřina Mrázková/Daniel Mrázek were already at JGP Courchevel which leaves us with one participating team: Barbora Zelená/Jáchym Novák skating to Fire on fire. It’s quite lyrical, they looked good except for a twizzle mishap. 

Natálie Taschlerová/Filip Taschler - Yuyo verde, Invierno porteno Sadly I didn’t see their new RD... They recycled their FD which is very understandable - Filip is coming back after a knee injury so they didn’t have the time for training new choreography, they almost didn’t show the FD internationally last season (didn’t advance into FD at Worlds) and especially they need to be ready in a month for Nebelhorn Trophy trying to qualify for the Olympics. So any experimenting wouldn’t be that wise. I love them, they are awesome, so smooth, wonderfully in synch, have great twizzles and I think their approach is “a lot of energetic skating” but here it wasn’t just pure energy and power they were also so light. 

Pairs

Martin Bidař/Elizaveta Zhuk were not participating but look, there is a junior pair? Barbora Kuciánová/Filip Vochozka skating to Someone you love. It was great! They really skated and performed to the music, which I think in pairs is often not the case because the skaters concentrate so much on the difficult elements. Interesting is that twist is their fourth element, at first they did the sbs jumps to get them out of the way (2A + 2T, 2T fall), good landings on throw jumps, one great lift, one not so great lift. I saw them for the first time and I love them already!

[figure-skating-watch-party]

Test skates  (Czech test skates, French masters)

Note to self: “I don’t have to note it down, I’ll remember” - this never ever works. On the other hand, it will be a short post :D

Czech test skates

I’ll just want to mention some skates I liked.  1) I’ll gush over them some time later, but the Taschler siblings are really improving so quicky and so much and their new RD and FD are amazing. They are ready to enter the senior competitions in style.  2) Eliška Březinová and her La La Land FP. Everyone has their fave warhorses, right? And La La Land makes me happy. That’s all. It also suits Eliška and her yellow dress looks great. 

3) Georgii Reshtenko. Michal wasn’t there, Matyáš Bělohradský wasn’t there... but Georgii saved the day! 

4) We can’t forget Damian Malczyk because Black Betty! He certainly is Javi’s fan. (part 1, part 2)

French masters

(The initial note applies here even more, but I’ll try)

1) Kevin Aymoz. Kevin really is a unique skater. The moves, the way he just “is” on the ice, I love it. FP - Lay it on me. 

2) Pairs! Cleo Hamon & Denis Strekalyn and Coline Keriven & Noel Antoine Pierre. It won’t be that easy for them on the international stage, they’ll have to take the lead instead of comfortably growing up in the shadow of more experienced pairs but they can do it!

3) Ice dance. France has so many great ice dance teams that sometimes I can’t wrap my mind around it. LIke how??? Of course, Papadakis/Cizeron and Lauriault/LeGac stayed in Canada but the participants didn’t give you much chance to think about who was missing because it was really awesome.  There were Demougeot/Le Mercier and Terreaux/Perron in juniors ... and then in seniors Adelina Galyavieva/Louis Thauron (wd after the RD), Evgenia Lopareva/Geoffrey Brissaud (technically third and fourth French teams but so goood) ...

And the absolutely biggest highlight of the ice dance event and I dare say it will be one of my favourite dances of the whole season: Natacha Lagouge/Arnaud Caffa -  FD Sposa son disprezzata. The stylisation, the costumes, the storytelling, the fun, That’s theatre on ice! That’s what I want to see!