Grand Prix Final 2015- Men's Free

To see what happened in the men's short and some of what I thought, you can watch the video here.

The men's free saw two more world records broken by Yuzuru Hanyu. He beat his total score record by nearly 10 points. He had two fantastic skates, and he's finally having a great season. Until this season, I can't remember ever seeing Yuzuzru Hanyu do a clean free in competition, and now he seems to be able to do that pretty consistently. I really enjoy watching his free, especially when he skates it well, not even necessarily world-record breaking, but as long as he skates it fairly well, it is dynamic and exciting. I have to say though, that the fact that skating skills was his lowest PCS was more than a little surprising, that's not to say it wasn't an amazing score, but compared to some of the other PCS elements, I would've put the skating skills on par at least.

Javier Fernandez held his position in second place in the free, but he was close to 40 points behind Hanyu. His free was better than the short, but still not nearly as amazing as Hanyu. He didn't have the same performance impact as Hanyu and as even Fernandez has had in the past. Most of his elements were very good, with the exception of the opening quad toe and the triple flip sequence. He got an edge call(!) on the flip and negative GOEs on the toe. Many of his elements had close to 0 GOEs. He also did very well in the PCSs, all of them were over 9.

Shoma Uno finished in third, but got fourth in both programs. He had strong elements overall, with the exception of a triple lutz, which he got an edge call on (e). He really needs to work on the details of his programs. He needs to work on the landing position, and the details within the skating skills. He did well on the PCSs, but still fell behind Hanyu, Fernandez, and Chan in that department. With a little more work on the transitions, choreography, and skating skills to ensure he can start to beat out the others, even when they're skating well. He beat Chan overall, but he lost the free to him because Chan did actually skate well. With a little more refinement, he's going to be consistently fighting for the top spot.

Patrick Chan recovered well from the disaster that was his short program. In the free, all of his GOEs were positive and all of his PCSs were over nine, averaging over 9.5. He is able to use his PCSs to keep up his total score despite the fact that he doesn't necessarily have the technical content others do. He's really not skating well this season, he's nowhere near back to himself, and others have improved while he has been slipping in terms of technical skills. He is learning to perform, but he is sacrificing the technical content. I don't have a problem with learning to perform, but with Chan, he has certain standards to meet based on what he's done in the past, and he is falling far short of the expectations we have of him.

Boyang Jin wasn't able to hold onto his lead from the short. He fell from third to fifth in the free. He did attempt four quads in the free, and got positive GOEs on three of them. He had the third highest technical mark in the free, but he fell far short of the others in PCSs. He's become so proficient in the technical elements that he's missing some of the basic skating and performance skills. He clearly can perform, we see it in the step sequences, and a little more often in the short, but it all falls away so that he can do the difficult technical elements. As those become even easier for him, hopefully he will start to build the transitions into and out of those elements. With time and energy spent on transitions, choreography, skating skills, and performance, he may just be the one to beat out Hanyu, but I have a feeling it's going to be a while before he's at that point, if he gets there at all.

Daisuke Murakami fell one place in the free, leaving him in last place. His program wasn't great, but he didn't have a disastrous program. He had some negative GOEs, and repeated the quad salchow out of combination, and it was also downgraded. That left him with a base value of just over 3. He got an edge call (!) on a flip as well. He had better PCSs than Boyang Jin, but couldn't make up the technical difference. I generally like Murakami, but he couldn't manage to hold it together here.