Come on HAYLEY!! FINALIST FOR SURE!!!!

Whilst Beth may have the best technical ability (and she should have, after all she's an Olympic gymnast) but IMO she's very stiff and chunky and lacks elegance. I think Suzanne and Hayley are much easier on the eye to watch

Hayley and beth are more popular which makes me happy.

Lacks elegance?

I disagree. Watch her "Somewhere Only We Know" routine. She's just as good as the other two, but Chris and Jayne simply aren't giving her that kind of choreography.

Hayley could never look good doing the routines Beth does... Yet, Beth could easily take on Hayley's routines.

I guarantee that if Beth did something as simple as Hayley did tonight, she'd receive a battering off the judges for lack of skating, tricks and lifts. It's a farce. Glad the public kept her in tonight.

Personally, I think the order is:

Suzanne
Beth
Hayley

But it is pretty much irrelevent now as Suzanne is out.

I'm sorry but I am more than over watching Hayley being held by Dan for most of her ice dancing performance/s.

As graceful as she is and as expressive as she can be, she is the weakest ice skater on the show now.
The fact she is barely left to skate on her own for more than ten seconds is telling. And no, the standing on the spot dancing does not count for me.

Beth may not have the finesse of Hayley's performance skills but she makes up for it doubly for me by being able to skate on her own for a good length of time without the support of her partner.

I'm not a fan of Suzanne's but even she can skate well enough on her own with having to hang onto Matt for virtually the whole time.

I personally don't want to see Hayley in the final if her performances are going to continue like this. Her skates are beginning to be predictable to me and I actually gasp in surprise if she is out of Dan's reach for more than 10 seconds while they are skating.

I was really hoping for a Hayley and Suzanne skate off and wasn't bothered who went. However I have to say I would have wished for Suzanne to not have made the obvious mistakes she did and then if she went out then fine but I surprised myself by being a bit upset that she left the competition in the way she did.

I have to agree. Beth can sometimes look wooden to me and it stood out next to two performers. I think she has a big fan base and that can make a huge difference.

Suzanne was probably the best in terms of technical skating ability and performance combined but I've been disappointed with the routines she's been given this year.

Hayley gets a hard time on here with a lot of comments about what she can't do. I think this can depend on choreography as well to some extent. While I've never seen her do the tricks that Beth can do, her routines this time around don't seem to even cover what she was capable of in her series.

Next week should hopefully sort things out!

Solo skate time...........

Well Dan apparently choreographed their routine tonight, something's he's normally very good at..........

Hopefully this will finally expose Hayley's weaknesses. It annoys me when Beth & Kyran get slated on their performance but Hayley never really gets picked up on her weak skating. I had hoped Nicky might be the one to pick her up but no.

At least Beth has improved & is constantly working on her performance but I don't see any improvement in Hayley's skating. But then I guess if she's not critiqued properly on her skating there has been no incentive for her to improve in this area.

I would say she is deserving of the hard time on here as she is most certainly the weakest left now. Hayley's routines have been very careful to cover her weaknesses with the perform perform perform and lets dance wiggle whatever on the spot and lets just gloss over the not being as good at the technical elements by overfocusing on the performance. She isn't doing half of what the others Beth in particular have been doing. Beth and Suzanne haven't been lucky their routines have not been choreographed to hide the flaws and therefore they get picked up on them more.

I don't think she was that great in her series either as I think she got very lucky in that it wasn't a year with a lot of stand out skaters had she taken part in another year it might have been a very different outcome.

Beth has not had the advantage of years of stage school training and has to pretty much reprogramme her brain against what she has been trained to do all her life in her gymnastics. While there is an element of performance in gymnastics it is not stage school performance. Beth is coming out and doing tricks that have never been done before and stuff you would expect from the pro girls come on Nina did the backflip tonight as well and messed it up and never gets proper credit for it all she gets is perform perform perform. I'm sure this show used to actually be partly aboutthe skating maybe it should be renamed as Jazz Hands On Ice as that is all it seems to be about these days.

Bonnie could do Hayley's routines. She's a vastly more experienced dancer and actress, has danced stronger routines in musicals, and is more supple, and even smaller and easier to lift. Zaraah could try some - although she may have had less dance training. Suzanne would find them easy and she, Bonnie, Zaraah, Jorgie or Clare could throw in some bigger tricks on top.

Haley is the weakest skater of the three, and the difference is obvious. Fortunately for her, she had a routine that was all about the arms and telling a story.

Beth is the weakest performer, but she's doing much more complicated routines, and learning new moves each week, which makes it harder for her to perfect them.

Haley's routine was well executed, but definitely over-marked.

Beth is the improvement story. With the right music and choreography she can look as graceful and act as well as the great gymnasts used to before the codes changed and gymnasts specialised. In the right routine she can act and move well enough to match anyone. She just can't act as many roles, or do as many dance steps as Suzanne and Hayley. But she can do bigger tricks than Hayley.

The show doesn't deal with that problem - although its now all been put out into the open by multiple comments from the judges. It doesn't optimise Beth's routines to her abilities, as it does with Hayley. Its also ridiculous to knock marks off Beth (or Suzanne) for thinking about the difficulty she's about to do, and then to award marks to someone else whose dance is uneffected by coping with that difficulty. There's also the basic problem that actors (usually) act better than non actors, and you have to cater for that. Its no coincidence that all the top females are 5-3 or under, and all but one were actresses - usually with dance training. The show just requires, and favours, some body types, and some training.

Hayley has Jai Ho as her secret weapon although that's not a guarantee of success. Suzanne's Music tonight was a let down after the original.

For me Beth is the weakest out of the 3 girls, but it may be because I don't know much about the technical side of skating and she definitely lacks in performance compared to the other two girls. I thought Suzanne was much better than the other two girls so annoyed she messed up the skate off tonight.

Beth still has the chance to really up her game. When she gets the right routine and does it well, she can be amazing (and the judges still don't seem to like her )

With Hayley, I'd be surprised if she can bring her technical skating up to the standard of her performance. We haven't seen her do even basic tricks yet. I like her but agree that she was the best of a bad year when she won it.

The dislike of Kyran and Beth proves the point that they don't like sports people to do well....even Karen and Nicky who have been sports people. Surely they should know that performance is no match for technical skill and difficulty. It was what made the difference between them and Torvill and Dean. The later had the difficulty and flawless skill, not just performance.

I was just thinking exactly the same thing!!

You need both. A technical skate alone would be dull, just as singers who just sing the notes in order prefectly are dull. You also need nerve - even more if you are a female doing tricks.

This series should have been about whether Beth could add performance skills and expand her envelope of tricks and skills . She's doing that, a bit intermittently, and not always to any impact with the judges. They are not using her gymnastics ability to the full either -they need more imagination there. It should have been about finding out whether, an older, Jorgie could bring her performance and skills up nearer to Suzanne's level. It should have been about exploring Bonnie's potential - but only the routine she wrote herself did that well. It should also have been about Hayley upping her skill level . She did that in her Charleston number - but she's now gone back to stock simple lifts = that Misses Salmon and Messenger could do - when there's probably a dozen people who could do bigger moves. Suzanne needed a series of good routines with some momentum building between them , and there was no reason not to give her some of Hayley's more rounded routines with bigger tricks. Suzanne seems to have done her bit and mastered most of her new moves , but they were used as random wow factor when needed, some routines had too much difficulty in them, and she also failed to get much credit.

It could have been a very close interesting race - with improvements all around, but its been twisted to death from week one, distorted by the choregraphy issued, and confused by ever changing arguments and inconsistent marking from the judges, and decided by familiarity and fanbase size. I think if the contestants didn't want not to upset ITV, or lose the tour, there would quite a few of them pointing out how bad its been for them - some of the comments from celebs and pros have been implying that since week one too.

Choreography is definitely important and has influenced things. Certainly many people have been short changed.

However why is this only applying to every other girl and not Hayley? How do you know she isn't getting denied routines that show off her ability too? Her week one routine and last night's were boring and basic as hell like Suzannes last week. Yet apparently that's because she can't do anything bigger but if that happens to the other girls it's a farce. Highly unfair on Hayley. I'd say her and Beth have had equal number of dull and good routines, if anything Beth has been given better stuff to work with overall.

Hayley might be technically less good than some - though there's no need for this as I'm sure she could do well there too given half a chance - but she's still very competent and can do so much more than her routines suggest.

so let's not pretend Hayley isn't being used in her own way here. She can do so much more than toe pick on ice and act. Many of her series 5 routines show that.

If she's capable of so much more then why did Dan choreograph such a basc rourtne? You'd think he'd want to show off how good her skills are? Or does he not thinks she's upto it?
He said in an interview this week that he'd choreographed it this week, no idea why when the others seem to have had theirs given to them!

Hayley relies far too much on her on the spot, side by side dancing on toepicks with lots of arm movements.

She was exactly the same during her series, and hasn't imploved much since then. She can act (perform) her routines - but I agree, that she is the weakest SKATER left in the competition - the others can do much much more than she can moving round the ice - and her desperation to win isn't attractive to see either. The girls team challenge was built around her limitations with all the armography (a la Jai Ho) rather than including all the trick the others could do.

The solo skate should show that up next week - she's the worst skater left

You could ask why anyone gets a crap routine, self choreography or not. Why did Beth get one this week? Why Suzanne last? It just happens.

Clearly the Charleston routine, Jai Ho etc show she can do so much more than last night.

I think skating wise the girls are all much of a muchness...Beth is stronger I'd agree but not to any huge level. Certainly the boys do more on that score.

I don't think performance should be sidelined so easily either. Could Beth do Jai Ho? Yes, she could doall of the moves. Would she make it look good? Not so sure. Her arms would be a bit ungainly no doubt with none of the tightness. In this sense Hayley offers something better.

Beth CAN do performance and has improved but just not as well.

Solo skate will be interesting - will they all be doing the same and graded accordingly or will it be their own piece? Beth should edge it but how much performance will be involved?

I can't see Hayley shaming herself anyway. Her routine might make up for it anyway