Little Lion King

[tako_cham]

The Inside Edge: What language barriers?
By Sarah S. Brannen and Drew Meekins, special to icenetwork.com

(02/09/2012) - We got to the World Arena Wednesday night in time to watch the Japanese and Brazilian men practice at Four Continents. We found Misha Ge in the stands, awestruck by Daisuke Takahashi.



"Of course my idols are [Evgeni] Plushenko and [Alexei] Yagudin," said Ge, who grew up in China and Russia and competes for Uzbekistan. "But Takahashi is really special -- so smooth, so amazing."

Ge speaks fluent Chinese and Russian, which means he is able to talk to most of the competitors here.

"It's kind of funny in the locker room," he said. "I speak Russian, then Chinese, then English ... I can talk to almost everyone. Not the Japanese. I want to learn Japanese next."

Ge has been working on getting a consistent triple Axel, and he landed some in practice Thursday, although they weren't perfect. There were plenty of quads to be seen, including some from Denis Ten and Takahito Mura. We saw some pretty impressive quad-triple combinations from Takahashi and Patrick Chan. We're looking forward to seeing them, and everyone else, at the men's short program.

(Source)

I only included the parts about Misha from this article because I think he's awesome and the world needs more Misha. The rest of the article which talks about Wagner and Jermajesty can be accessed from the link. But really, anyone see Misha's FP last night? It's not on youtube yet, but if it goes up, I'll try to link it. In summary, he was pretty awesome. The performances before him were mostly just "meh", but he really put his heart out there on the ice. My favorite technical element in figure skating is the footwork and during his foot work, he was just on fire. He was really dramatic and expressive in his program and jumped up to 8th place. Good for him. His Dai-chan stanning is also not only really cute, but now official. He beat his record score too! Yay, Misha!

Click to view

Also, a 5 things good that came out of the men's 4cc:

5. Misha skates a great performance
4. Peter Carruthers is anti-Chanflation
3. Idk what FCCoSp or a CCoSp exactly is other than some form of spin, but Daisha got a level 4 and Chan a 3
2. Dai beats Chan in Performance in the sp (FINALLY!)
1. Daisha beats Chan in GOE on his Circular Step Sequence (Honestly I nearly cried)

Also, thanks to those kind people yesterday. You know who you are.

~Tako-cham