Skate Canada Starts Today!!!

One week into the season, we're off to Ottawa, Ontario (which, if you ever have the chance, is a great city to visit). Skate Canada had all of the makings of a HUGE showdown in ladies (everyone who wasn't at Skate America is basically at Skate Canada), mens, ice dancing, and even pairs.

Well, that was then...during the summer when the GP assignments came out. This is now, and the list of scratches is long enough for me to make a list:

1) Jeffrey Buttle: Well, if you don't know about this, it's time to play some SERIOUS catch-up. His retirement has, to quote every single article that I've read, "rocked the skating world". He's happy with it, but we're certainly not.

2) Stephane Lambiel: Yet another retirement that shocked everyone. This one was SLIGHTLY less surprising than Buttle's, since we'd watched as Stephane traveled back and forth between New Jersey and his home country multiple times over the sumer to try and overcome injury. The retirements of both Lambiel and Buttle have put a significant dent in the advancement of mens figure skating--they were two of the few skaters who could really work the CoP AND put out dazzlingly beautiful programs.

3) Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir: Canada's ice dancing wunderkinds. Tessa is still recurring from a previously unannounced leg surgery brought on by overpracticing. They hope to be back by NHK, but it's really sad that Canada, which has really led the way with North American ice dancing, doesn't have anyone skating.



Okay, so on to the people who are actually competing...

In the ladies field, keep an eye out for Canadian favorite Joannie Rochette. She's competing against Carolina Kostner of Italy, who won silver at World's last year (don't EVEN get me started on that). Joannie is a really strong, powerful skater who's had some jumping inconsistancies, but has gotten so much better over the past few seasons. Also in the mix is Fumie Suguri (remember her?), who needs a medal here to show that she's still in the running for a spot on the Japanese World team come January (she only has to compete against a few girls you may have heard of--Mao Asada...Miki Ando...Yukari Nakano--and that's just at home. No pressure or anything). Caroline Zhang, Bebe Liang, and Alissa Czisny will be competing for the US here. Caroline is probably looking to repeat her amazing Grand Prix debut last year, so definitely keep an eye out for her and her "pearl" spin. Never count out Alissa Czisny either (see Nationals 2007, please). She's back with a whole new attitude to go with (hopefully more consistant) jumps and her exquisite spins.

On to the men. This was supposed to be a huge competition, but thanks to the retirements, that is no longer so. Evan Lysacek will be here, hopefully coming back with a vengeance (and fully rotated jumps--PLEASE EVAN!!!!) after his placement at Skate America. His main competition here will be homeprovince (is that even a word?) favorite Patrick Chan, who is now holding the weight of Skate Canada (the organization, which incidently has the same name as the competition) on his shoulders after Jeff's retirement. He's been practicing the quad over the summer, but I doubt that he'll risk putting it in this early in the season. Also in the mix is Russian up-and-comer Sergei Voronov, so keep an eye out for him.

As for the pairs, my personal favorite pairs team--Canada's own Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison--will be competing here. If you haven't seen their freeskate from last season's World Championships, go and watch it now and try telling me that you don't love them (and that's an order). They're coming in with a triple twist, having won a bronze at Worlds with only a double. I seriously CANNOT WAIT to see them. The other team that I'm looking forward to is my fellow Americans, Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker. They were great at last week's Skate America, coming in second place behind the current World Champs. Here's to hoping that they repeat that beautiful freeskate here (you're only carrying the hopes of the entirety of the American pairs program, guys...just saying). One team that those two pairs should definitely watch out for would be Kawaguchi and Smirnov. They've gotten a lot of attention lately, especially since it was a HUGE deal that the Russians actually had to look outside of their country to create a suitable pairs team--Kawaguchi is from Japan. Things sure can change in just a few years! They're a really strong team and are certainly contenders for the gold.

And then there is ice dancing. My favorite team, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, will be competing here, so forgive me if I'm a little bit biased. With Virtue and Moir no longer competing, these guys have a serious shot at their first GP gold!!!!! They really haven't gotten any press, which is disappointing, and have been living in the shadow of Belbin and Agosto as well as Virtue and Moir (they were all training mates until Belbin and Agosto switched coaches). Also in the running is the French team of Pechalat and Bourzat--if anyone is going to take the gold away from Davis and White, it will probably be them. We've got a strong American contingent here--Navarro and Bommentre, the bronze medalists at last year's US Nationals, are here as well as up-and-comers Wester and Barantsev (um, they're married and they're kind of the cutest couple ever...just saying).


So there aren't any huge, lifechanging events going on here (unless you're Meryl and Charlie!!!!), but there should be some good skating this weekend. Definitely tune in if you have the time!

What Happened...Part II

Ugh, I'm sorry that this is taking me forever to do.

Ice Dancing:
The big hype here was not actually the current reigning world champs, Delobel and Schoenfelder. It Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto--unless you've been living under a rock for awhile, you've probably heard that they switched coaches over the summer. Well, they still came in second, but I have to say that I think that they're headed in the right direction. The changes could really be spotted in the CD, where they looked cleaner and more comfortable. I wasn't a HUGE fan of their FD, skated to the music from the opera Tosca, mostly because Tanith looked kind of awkward, as though she didn't fit in with the character that she was supposed to be portraying. Ben, as always, still looked very strong, and that's what saved the program for me. I do think that a few more months with their new coaches will do quite a bit for them.

And because I talked about Belbin and Agosto for this whole post, and they didn't even win, I'll give you Delobel and Schoenfelder's OD. Please note Olivier Schoenfelder's new look:



Pairs:
There were no surprises in this round of the competition, except for the short program, where the Russians pulled off a minor upset by coming up ahead of the German World Champs Savchenko and Szolkowy. The world righted itself in the free skater, where the Germans came out on top once again. However, the real highlight for me of this competition was the young American team of Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker. I am SO SO happy that the US might have the medal prospects in the pairs division in the coming years. They were great! They skated to West Side Story, which is a little bit overused, but they pulled it off and made it seem fresh with their great choreography and a HUGE throw triple loop at the end (and not to mention that triple twist in the beginning). The best part was the look on Keauna's mother's face (she co-coaches them with Captain Blood herself, Dalilah Sapenfield) when they finished the program--she was in tears, which was so cute :-)

So if you're going to watch nothing else of the pairs competition, you need to watch the long. I can't find it on YouTube right now, so you'll have to do with the short in the meantime:

What Happened at Skate America: Part I

LADIES:
YU-NA KIM!!!!! This girl was absolutely, positively breathtaking. There's been all of this hype about the next generation of American ladies, but a lot of them were there at SA and just could not compare once Yu-Na stepped onto the ice. She singled a loop in her long program and stepped out on a double axel in her short, but there were no falls and she just looked so much more confident. Keep those fingers crossed for an injury-free season for her--it hasn't happened quite yet on the senior circuit. She won by twenty points in what might be one of the strongest ladies fields in the individual Grand Prix events. I think that she and Mao Asada will be going head to head all summer. As far as the rest of the ladies go, the competition was okay, but not great. No quad from Miki Ando, which isn't exactly a surprise. Yukari Nakano still has that wrapped leg that makes me cringe. Mirai Nagasu has some growth issues to work out, but I think that she'll be the one to watch for the Americans this year. I like Rachael Flatt, but I don't love her. As far Kimmie Meissner, well, she made me almost want to cry. She obviously has mental issues to work out--what she did land looked very good, but this competition was not a great way for her to start out the season.



Men:
Okay, so I understand why Evan Lysacek came in third--it was all technical stuff that they found with a sloooooooooow motion camera. His step sequences also apparently hurt him. However, the fact that he didn't win is making me lose some faith in the CoP. Yes, the quad kind of failed. However, everything else looked amazing (to my eye), and Kozuka just did not have the charisma that Evan had--he didn't draw you into his program. Johnny came in second with two programs that were good, but will probably get better. I think that he'll be landing that quad by the end of the season--he's very close now and mostly two-foots it or steps out, so he's not getting the one point deduction for falls. The rest of the men were slightly disappointing. Adam Rippon hada rough start to his senior career, but this was his first competition at this level, and I'm sure that we'll be seeing more from him.

Compulsories

The results from the compulsory dance are in, and Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder are in first with 38.49 points, followed very, very closely by Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto who have 37.63. The Kerrs sit in third followed by Pernelle Carron and Mathieu Jost, another French team.

Even from just looking at the costumes (I haven't seen the dances yet, but I will later on!), Belbin and Agosto have a different style. The compulsories have always been their weak point, and they're closer to the top than they usually are when facing competition like Delobel and Schoenfelder, so it's safe to say that they still have a good chance at winning.

Judging from what I've seen of the French World Champs, they look great--really fit, really in sync, and definitely every inch of a pair of world champions. I think that this competition is going to be an extremely close one, so stay tuned!

Quadruple the Fun?

Word on the street is that Miki Ando has been nailing quads during the practice sessions at Skate America. Will we be seeing one in her freeskate? She's done this before, landing quads on the practice ice and either popping or falling during the competition, but her coach, Morosov, is claiming that she's a completely changed skater.

I guess we'll have to wait until Saturday, but if this information is true, the ladies competition (if it's possibly) just got a whole lot more interesting.

Patience is a Virtue

2008 World Silver medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada have pulled out of Skate Canada. According to CBC, Tessa has not fully recovered from an unannounced leg surgery due to overtraining. They're hoping that she'll be healthy enough for NHK, but this significantly lowers their chances of making the Grand Prix Final.

Wow, this is a surprise. Skate Canada's world team has been dropping like flies--Jeff Buttle retired, Langlois and Hay are injured, Mabee is out for the season, and now their ice dancing prodigees are out of their own Grand Prix event. I hope that Tessa gets better soon! I'm surprised that we didn't hear anything about her being injured, but maybe they wanted to keep it quiet to avoid all of that speculation stuff that goes along with injuries in skating. Now we'll have to wait a whole extra month to see whether or not they'll be able to live up to their previous season (which I expect they will).

On the other hand, this opens up a huge door for the American teams at the event, particularly Meryl Davis and Charlie White. They have a serious shot at the gold medal now.

New and Improved

This year's Skate America seems to be all about being brand new and sparkly...at least for the Americans.

There's Kimmie Meissner. Google News her to find a bunch of articles just like this one. There are skaters whose style I like better, but my heart is 100% for Kimmie. If there is one skater who I am dying to see succeed at this competition, it is her. Will Richard Callaghan and Todd Eldredge (yeah, remember him and his amazing spins?!)work their magic? I think that I, and most of America, hope so...we're not quite ready to move on to Mirai, Caroline, and Rachael just yet. GO KIMMIE!!!!!

While Kimmie Meissner fell (literally and figuratively) at Nationals, our next duo fell at Worlds. I'm talking about Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto. They, too, have changed coaches, this time to Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov. I, for one, am thrilled that they did this--Michigan was looking a little bit crowded. While, with the sudden coaching change of Domina and Shabilin, Aston, PA may be feeling a bit cozy at the minute as well, I think that this coaching change is going to work out for the better. There's lots of hype about their new "back to basics" attitude, choreography, and (hopefully) improved compulsories. Again, I would LOVE to see these two have a really successful season--it hasn't really happened since the Olympics.

Next is Johnny Weir. His coaching change isn't quite as new, but hopefully it's for the better. He has a brand new, 100% focused on skating mentality that's bound to be dangerous to his competitors, so I figured that he should be put in here.

And last is Evan Lysacek. Evan didn't have a coaching change this year, but he did have a major choreographer one, moving to the one and only Queen of the Fur Coat herself, Tatiana Tarasova. Will Evan dabble into rhinestones and sparkles territory? Will we see something other than the all black, Zorro-Carmen-Tosca-esque guy we've been seing for the past four years? I love Evan, so hopefully we will be!

And that's all of the major changes for major skaters that I can think of this season.

And, because I forgot about them in my last post, try to find a way to watch Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker. They're America's only feasible hope of a medal collection this season in the pairs event (unless Inoue and Baldwin surprise us), so I'd try to tune on online (I doubt they'll be shown on TV in the US) as they take on the Germans.