Japan and Finland are both good choices.
Due to its geographical location, the Japanese station is rarely chosen by athletes from countries that have always been strong in the pair skating event, such as Italy, the United States, and Canada, because the top athletes will definitely give priority to their own country's stations with home advantages, and then the closer sub-stations.
After all, traveling a long distance and adjusting to jet lag is not an easy thing to do. If it affects your performance in the game, it will not be worth it.
For a sub-station like Japan, which is thousands of miles away from Europe and America, perhaps only in Russia, which spans the Eurasian continent, will there be athletes who would choose it as a second stop.
There is no other way. China has the largest land area in the world, so it doesn't matter whether we choose the European station or the Asian station. There are many figure skating talents in the country, and we can't all squeeze them into the European station to compete among ourselves. This may sound a bit Versailles, but it is the fact in Russia.
Japan's own doubles event is in a slump. For Lu You and Xie Yunjun, the opportunity of having a JGP sub-station in Japan this year is a perfect combination of time, location and people. As for the Finland station, since Canada and the United States both have their own home stations this year, a large number of strong Canadian-American combinations have been diverted, so the competition is relatively much smaller.
The possibility of winning these two sub-stations was probably due to the help of the country's ice hockey association. Last year, the performance of the youth group in pair skating was very poor, which made people laugh at the fact that there was no successor to China's pair skating. If no results are achieved this year, the ice hockey association itself will have a hard time explaining itself.
"Japan is the third stop, which will be held in mid-September, and Finland is the seventh stop, which will be held at the end of the month," Lu Tingsong said, "We don't have much time to adjust and prepare. We will have to go to Finland a day or two earlier so that the children can adjust to the time difference."
Lu Tingsong: "I looked at it and the biggest opponent in the Japanese station is VA from Goose. The Finnish station is a bit hellish, with players from the United States and Canada participating... and there is only one Japanese referee in the Finnish station."
The United States, Canada, and Russia are all old and powerful countries in figure skating, which are usually referred to as "noble nationalities". Among the existing international referees, each referee is privately divided into factions by ice fans due to a combination of reasons such as his or her background. The "goose-style" and "Japanese-style" referees usually referred to by ice fans also come from this.
Relatively speaking, Asian referees, who are also yellow-skinned people whose scores are suppressed by the referees, will be much fairer in scoring when facing Asian players. However, there is only one poor Asian referee in the Finnish station. If he is not careful in scoring, he may fail when the highest score is removed.
This is definitely not good news for Lu You and Xie Yunjun.
However, the allocation of referees for each Grand Prix has always been decided by the ISU drawing lots, and outsiders have no right to interfere. Encountering this situation at the Finnish station can only be said to be bad luck.
Jiang Yang: "No matter what, let's win the Japan station first. The competition in Japan is the least."
"This is the most promising event to stand on the podium. Last year, we did not make any achievements in the youth group of pairs skating. This cannot happen again this year. Pairs is the only advantage our country has left in figure skating. We cannot lose this honor."
After Jiang Yang finished speaking, he realized belatedly that he was afraid of putting too much pressure on the two children. Turning around, he saw Lu You doing yoga ball support while discussing with Xie Yunjun what dishes were available in the cafeteria for lunch.
Lu You said, what is pressure? Is it important to have a good meal?
Feeling Jiang Yang's gaze, Lu You raised his head and gave a sweet smile to the coach who was over fifty years old.
Jiang Yang had no idea what Lu You meant, so he waved his hand helplessly: "Relax your muscles, then go eat."
Lu You: “Okay!”
In addition to Lu You and Xie Yunjun, Guan Xiaoxuan and Zhang Bai of the Jianglin provincial team will also participate in the JGP ice dance event, and the rest of the team have basically been promoted to a higher group and are currently waiting for the start of the adult Grand Prix. There are not many entertainment activities in the provincial team, and the youth Grand Prix is the only A-level event in the near future, so everyone's attention is naturally centered around the Grand Prix.
When Lu You and Xie Yunjun arrived at the cafeteria, the figure skating team members were eating in a group. Guan Xiaoxuan saw them coming in and quickly called out to them, "Lu You and Xie Yunjun, come and sit down!"
Lu You took the dishes and sat next to Xie Yunjun, concentrating on eating.
Someone put food on Lu You and Xie Yunjun's plates and joked, "Eat more, eat more. You two little middle school students will be competing with some adults next week."
Lu You chewed the food in his mouth, swallowed it, and then asked in confusion: "Huh?"
"You two don't know yet? South Korea's Nan Yazhu will also participate in the Japanese leg. She just got a new male partner during the offseason. He is a naturalized Korean from Australia. I heard that her goal is to win the championship of this Japanese leg. She is trying to confront the Big Goose in both open and covert ways."
"But I don't look down on her. What's the point of fighting against the Russians in the Japanese sub-station? If she is so confident, why doesn't she go to the Russian station to face the perverts in the young group of the big goose head-on? But there is no need. VA can suppress her."
Lu You listened for a long time but had no idea what they were talking about. He and Xie Yunjun looked at each other, and the two kids looked confused.
The next second, someone answered her doubts: "VA is currently a very strong pair skating combination in the big goose, and is also your biggest opponent in this Japan station. Caveira and her male partner Anatoly both switched from single skating to pair skating because of the serious involution of Russian single skating. They are strong in single jumps like you. The names of Russia, Luo and Otai are too long to remember, so they are usually referred to as VA."
Jiang Yang came to the cafeteria at some point.
"As for Nan Yazhu," Jiang Yang said with a rare indifference, "this is her last year in the youth group. Next year, she will be over 19 years old and will have to move up to the adult group whether she wants to or not. After moving up to the adult group, I think it will be difficult for her to compete with her."
Lu You drank a mouthful of soup and asked his doubts: "So who is Nan Yazhu? Why do you all seem to dislike her?"
In the current world ranking list released by the International Skating Union, ranking first in the youth group are the Russian brother and sister duo YM (Evlova & Mosokov), followed by their fellow brothers and sisters VA (Cavilla & Anatoly). EC (Erica & Carlo) from Canada ranks third. As for Sinan and Xu Zhen, they have long dropped out of the top five due to their poor performance last season.
Comparing with the ranking of the adult group, the two pairs of Chinese veterans are still firmly sitting on the first and third thrones. Therefore, it is true that ice fans have commented that there is a lack of successors in the domestic youth pair skating scene.
But compared to these, Lu You was obviously more curious about who Nan Yazhu was.
Guan Xiaoxuan reminded her: "You may not know Nan Yazhu, but you must know her brother Nan Haoxian."
Lu You still didn't react, but Xie Yunjun understood: "Is that the one who pushed someone in the short track speed skating world championships?"
"Yes, it was that bastard," someone from the figure skating team answered, "I was so angry watching the live broadcast that I had a heart attack. If it weren't for that bastard's trick, the 500-meter short track gold medal should have been ours."
Guan Xiaoxuan: "And his sister Nan Yazhu's values also shocked my whole family. In an interview, she openly stated that her brother just had the dream that every athlete has. She felt that her brother did nothing wrong and just wanted to win a gold medal."
Guan Xiaoxuan: "I vomited right after hearing it. I almost vomited the food I hadn't eaten the night before."
Speaking of Nan Yazhu, although she was not as strong as other players of the same period in the past, because her Korean-style looks are in line with the aesthetic taste of Chinese people, there are still many ice fans in China who pay attention to her. But later on, no one knew what she was thinking. The players of the same period as her were promoted to higher groups, but she insisted on staying in the youth group until this year, and she changed countless male partners during this period. Many people speculated that she felt that she had no competitiveness in the adult group and wanted to win more medals in the youth group.
Otherwise, with the current hellish difficulty level of the adult group, and Nan Yazhu not having the noble nationality buff, it would be difficult for her to squeeze into the finals.
Later, the short track speed skating conspiracy incident happened. The Chinese ice and snow sports community was united. From then on, Nan Yazhu had no market at all in front of the Chinese people and became a hated existence.
After hearing this, Lu You, who had the spirit of patriotism rooted in her heart since childhood, immediately lost her favor for this South Korean player whom she had never met, and vowed on the spot to beat Nan Yazhu in the Japanese leg. She finished the rice on the plate in two or three bites, and with high morale, she pulled Xie Yunjun to go on the ice for practice. Jiang Yang was so surprised that he thought the sun had risen from the west today.
"I think I've figured it out. If we want Lu You to train well, we have to give her some stimulation."
While giving instructions, Jiang Yang told Lu Tingsong what happened in the cafeteria. Lu Tingsong laughed after listening to her. After he had laughed enough, he said, "But Nan Yazhu is indeed very strong in the youth group. She has a 3T+2T+2T combination jump. And because she has been in the youth group for a long time, her performance points have increased year by year. Now she is almost catching up with the players from Russia, the United States and Canada."
The performance score has always been greatly influenced by the judges' subjective opinions, so there is a lot of room for manipulation. However, there is an unwritten rule in figure skating that once the performance score reaches a certain level, it will not drop easily.
Jiang Yang said: "Lu You and Xie Yunjun are still young, and the Beijing Winter Olympics will be held the year after next. If the veterans maintain their condition well, it is estimated that they will not be able to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics by then. Their biggest opponent in the future is still Russia. In recent years, Russia's women's singles have become more and more competitive, and even the pairs skating has also become more competitive."
Seeing that Russia has produced many young players, and that one is better than the other, while the domestic pair skating this year depends on Lu You and Xie Yunjun, sometimes Jiang Yang also thinks that the worry-free character of the two children is quite good. If it were someone else, they might have developed a failure complex due to external pressure.
In September, when the school started, Lu You and Xie Yunjun didn't even report to school. Lu Tingsong helped them take leave and handed in their summer homework. The two trained in the provincial team for a few days, and then officially represented the country to Japan to participate in the points competition in the third stop of the World Figure Skating Junior Grand Prix.
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