What happened out there on the ice? This is not what I was expecting as I departed Illinois this morning at o'light 30! As I got sneezed on by the little girl at Denver International Airport! As I braved the ridiculous L.A. traffic at...2:30pm (It wasn't even rush hour and it was out of control). All in all, not a spectacular night of skating.
First up was the men. My thought was all these guys should be saying, "Who needs Evan Lysacek?!?!" And my hope is they would all step up to the plate despite his absence. But it turns out that maybe we do need Evan (US Figure Skating, please work out whatever little financial squabble is happening between you and Evan). It was rather uneventful. Richard Dornbush did provide a little pizazz to the competition in the first half. However, he found himself behind Daisuke Murakami who quad salchow'd his way to an early lead. The second group didn't improve much. Kevin Van Der Perren jumped his way into the top four just behind Murakami, Kozuka ended the night in second after a free skate marred with a nasty miss on the quad. The winner of the night was Michal Brezina who Kodo Drumed his way to the short program win (I thought he did quite well actually). Florent Amodio completely missed his combo and sits in 8th place. Denis Ten and Armin Mahbanoozadeh turned in so so skates to place 6th and 7th. Razzano is 9th and Contesti is bringing up the rear with a terrible short. And if you watched and are scratching your head about Dornbush's placement...so are we.
Next was the Short Dance and it has been a while since I've seen that many falls take place. Skater were falling on twizzles and steps all over the place. Several of those falls came in Pechalat and Bourzat's performance. They were a mess! Despite the mistakes they still find themselves in 2nd. Germans Zhiganshina and Gazsi (???) are third. Davis and White won the short dance, easily, by just over 10 points...but even they looked a little rough around the edges. The rest of the ice dance field was simply bland and if the team stayed on their feet they likely did better than a team that didn't.Fingers crossed the skating tomorrow goes up a notch.
Some goodies...you can see the program for Skate America by following this link right here.
You can see full results from the competition here.
3 comments:
I agree, last night was a huge letdown. Overall, the men were lackluster. Even the strong performances of Michal Brezina and Richard Dornbush couldn't breathe life into that event! Most of the programs are uninspired..especially Contesti's use of a 3 year old program. I wasn't overly wowed by dance either. Most of the sambas are awful! I didn't even get to see the second half of Meryl and Charlie's because IceNetwork crapped out.
I had considered not watching this year and last night made me want to reconsider that. Hopefully, it was just a slow start and it won't come to that.
Pechalat and Bourzat fell once. Paul/Islam fell THREE times and ruined my fantasy skating!!
Fabian was sick you guys. Don't be so harsh. Besides that fall, they were great in the SD and Fabian did its best on ice in the FD but he had fever that day.
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