These Russian ladies!

[rosereedy]

I was watching some of the Russian Nationals ladies skate (youtube) and talk about powerhouse skating.  They are lacking something though and can't put my finger on it, maybe some maturity to their skating, IDK.  But they were landing very clean powerful jumps and spins were crazy fast with a lot of flexibility.  Do you think that at the next Olympics they will be the ones that could really dominate? 

[sarahspins]

I don't know.. personally I feel like all the "little" russians are a lot of hype.. they may or may not maintain those skills as they mature.  Just look at Liza from last season (or further back) to this season where her body has obviously gone through some significant changes, and her skating is absolutely not the same, and it will be interesting to see if she can get back to where she was.

[techskater]

Sotnikova has the whole package, but is having a hard time with competition nerves outside of Russia (tends to make head scratching errors)
Tuktamysheva has the jumps (and they are impressive!!) but she is lacking in SS and ice coverage and her spins could use some improvement (the disparity between her TES and PCS outside of Russia shows this)
Lipnitskaia seems to be a one trick pony with her hyper-flexibility and her jumps are small (she withdrew from Russian Nationals due to injury) and is only 14
Radionova is 13 - let's see what happens

[karne]

You must've been watching last year's Nationals, because Russian Nationals doesn't start for another two days.

I tend to be quite wary of girl phenoms. The puberty monster has eaten many good skaters. That said, I'm impressed by how well Liza T is handling her new body, and very impressed by how well Mishin is working around it. Adelina doesn't seem to have recovered from her growth spurts yet. Lipnitskaya does nothing for me. Radionova impresses me, but she's 13, I'm not going to even consider going there.

Up until recently boy phenoms didn't concern me as much - until Artur G grew again at 19. Suddenly I'm worried for all my male favourites under the age of 20...

[Hanca]

I was watching some of the Russian Nationals ladies skate (youtube) and talk about powerhouse skating.  They are lacking something though and can't put my finger on it, maybe some maturity to their skating, IDK.  But they were landing very clean powerful jumps and spins were crazy fast with a lot of flexibility.  Do you think that at the next Olympics they will be the ones that could really dominate?

they would lack maturity, considering how young they are. Out of 18 ladies at Russian nationals, only about 6-7 was age eligible for senior competition, the rest was not. and some were not even old enough to compete in junior competitions! (younger than 13)

Saying that, they are impressive. Out of 18 girls 15 had triple-triple in their SP. And more than half of those had harder triples than just 3T-3T - it was often 3Lz-3T, 3F-3T and one 3Lz-3Lo. I agree that puberty may hit some of them hard; however, considering the number of very good skaters that have started coming through, I think some of them will definitely make it.