Go Back to Competition and Show Reviews Index
For the short programs, Tonia Kwiatkowski and Michelle Kwan did their competitive shorts. Michelle's program was flawless, but she looked a little tired; Tonia's was fine until she missed her death drop spin - yes, she got the triple lutz, but messed up a spin! Yuka Sato did a program to classical music I didn'trecognize and was not very on, falling on a triple loop combination. Kristi Yamaguchi did her new version of the "Mio Babbino Caro" Puccini program-wearing a 'watercolored' outfit- and was just incredible. Beautiful flow, great choreography, and the one of the few 6.0's of the night -- this was judged more like a real competition, with ISU judges. However, she totally blew the double axel in the artistic program (doing her tango number), which followed a perfect skate by Michelle to "Pocahontas", so that was the end of that. Tonia did her Liszt long program and Yuka did an interesting number to "Afternoon of a Faun," but her jumps were not there. Her flow over the ice is just incredible.
Todd Eldredge performed his "Christmas in Toddland" short and once again, just blew me away. This number is so perfectly suited to his skating, so well-crafted, spins were incredibly centered, great footwork, plus a triple axel-triple toe combo. Paul Wylie skated to the 1996 Olympics piece and had a three turn in the triple lutz-double toe combination (everyone skated a "real" short program). Triple flip was great, of course. Scott Hamilton (in a white shirt and black pants), had a bit of a bad change in his combination spin which may have given him a deduction, plus he only did a triple lutz-double toe combination and a solo triple toe. Then it was Kurt Browning's time to have the first unfortunate incident of the night. Skating a program I hadn't seen before to very percussive, Latin-type music, full of footwork, just incredible stuff, Kurt totally missed the triple axel, got about two turns around, then pops the double axel, got about 30 seconds to go in his program, doesn't do the last spin, keeps looking like he is going to do it, and then just stands there making apologetic motions to the audience and then takes his bows while the music continued to play. I have no idea what happened. The general theory was that someone's camera flash went off in his eyes and he was very disoriented, but I'm not sure what really happened. He got scores in the 3's with one 2.5 for technical merit. I'm sure Kurt was laughing about that one later.
Long Programs: Todd did "This Is The Moment" wearing a silver Gettysburg-type outfit (he has so many variations on the one theme, that I'm never entirely sure), did triple axel, lutz, loop, and toe (the men were limited to four triples). Great performace, although the music is sort of vomitous in my opinion. Paul did "On The Waterfront" and did a really excellent job as well. I know he got at least one 6.0 for presentation and it was probably the jumps that gave Todd the win. Scott did "Hungarian Rhapsody", usual Scott, complete with deduction-earning back flip, and Kurt did the "Serenade to Sonia" number, another nice performance although sans any triples harder than a loop.
The pairs competition was actually very good. Meno & Sand did their Chopin short with the SBS 3 toes, Kovarikova & Novotny had a poor performance of their perennial "Romeo & Juliet" program, both missing the double axels (one single, one two-footed). Brasseur & Eisler had an excellent program to "Malaguena" with a great lift and SBS double axels, and then Wötzel & Steuer had a perfect performance of the "Question Of You" short with SBS triple toes in perfect unison. Everything went great and W&S were first after the short. For the long, Brasseur & Eisler did a ballad with her in a red dress and him in black, very solid skating, no gimmicks or playing to the crowd, very enjoyable. Then Kovarikova & Novotny came out with a new program (at least to me) to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in shimmery gray costumes. This was a lovely program, although not too technically difficult. They had a throw triple toe and did the SBS double axels. Meno & Sand did a new program to another ballad that sounded sort of religious (???) wearing off-white. Jenni's dress had a triangular insert on the front in what I called "Necco wafer" colors. Their skating is much improved. Todd has much better extension and actually HOLDS his arms and his back. Throw double axels and SBS double axels included.
The oft-injured Mandy Wötzel & Ingo Steuer then proceeded to have the second unfortunate incident of the night when they had a terrible fall on the split triple twist, colliding and both hitting the ice hard and staying there for a minute. Ingo put a hand to his face, but was able to skate the rest of the number (to "Who Wants to Live Forever") to tumultous applause, but in that long gap they also missed their SBS jumps and so they were placed last. They wore their long program costumes and as they were leaving the ice, you could see blood all over the top of Ingo's white shirt. His nose was bleeding but I don't think it was necessarily anything worse than that, and the shock, and the hard fall. They take an incredible amount of speed into that split 3 twist.
The dance was very interesting (well, to me). All four teams did their original dances (Roca & Sur did their '95 quickstep). Once again, I thought Krylova & Ovsyannikov's tango was outstanding, and looked smoother than at Skate America. Bourne & Kraatz 's was good, but just didn't do it for me. Grishchuk & Platov did a psych-out and did the more romantic type of tango, in my opinion, much more successfully than that of Bourne & Kraatz. The shocker was that the judges placed K&O ahead of G&P in the Tango. I did think the K&O's number was harder. G&P's was wonderful also, but didn't have the technical "bonus points." For the free dances, Roca & Sur did some number in blue (not a song I knew...a vocal), Bourne & Kraatz did a horrendous ballad wearing white that did nothing for me. Krylova & Ovsyannikov did last year's folk dance free. G&P did a new program that was amazingly similar to Anissina & Peizerat's free this year. Uh-oh. They wore blue harem outfits, Oksana's with pantaloons, Yevgeni's looking remarkably like Ilya Kulik's "Aladdin" outfit. Moreover, Oksana G. not only had the same "Arabian" music that Oksana B. had last year, but also had the same hair! G&P won the free dance with a 6.0 from the Russian judge for presentation (I think it was also the Russian judge, albeit a different person, who gave the 6.0 to Paul Wylie!).
For the most part, there were good performances all around, and considering my tickets were free, it was well worth the price. ;-)
Go Back to Competition and Show Reviews Index