As far as the men are concerned, Nobunari Oda seems to be in pretty good shape--he won both the short and the free with a combined total of 224.67...not bad, but pretty far off of his personal best of 244.56 at NHK 2006. Of course, it is the very, very, very beginning of the season...so I'm not about to judge. He did manage to get all Level 3s and 4s on his spins and footwork sequences and landed a huge triple axel-triple toe that recieved +1.25 and was worth over 18 points. The guy who has me a little worried is Tomas Verner. I'm a big fan (and not just because I'm a teenage girl), but he isn't looking so good at the moment. He missed the podium by .33 points. Third in the short and fourth in the free? His countryman, Michael Brezina, beat him by about 23 points to claim silver (and landed 8 triples with no negative GOEs), and Yannick Ponsero came through to knock Verner off of the podium to claim bronze.
As far as the pairs, there really weren't any surprises. Savchenko and Szolkowy led in both the short and long. Their score was a little less than twenty points out of their personal best, but, again, it's only the beginning of the season. Hopefully they're set to be challenged this year by the up-and-comers in an otherwise rather disappointing (at least, in my opinion) field. They did receive quite a few negative GOEs in their long program, but, in the long run, their program components score helped them out.
Tomorrow will conclude the competition with pairs and ladies finals...so more on that later!
1 comment:
Um...I'm way worried about Tomas Verner as well. He needs to get that freeskate under his belt.
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