Wednesday 27 April 2011

World Championships - Men and Pairs

So despite my promises of live-tweeting, it turns out that British Eurosport decided only to show the top three performances - how disappointing! Still, here's some commentary and video for the top nine skaters (i.e all I could find on Youtube.)

1. Patrick CHAN - 93.02



Sandra Bezic recently tweeted that you don't "get" Patrick Chan until you see him live, and this is something I would absolutely agree with. His ease of movement, and flow across the ice, is just amazing when seen in person and is not really fully captured on tv. He achieved a world record score with this performance - fantastic. Having said that, to me it's not the most exciting program, in terms of music, but is still performed magically. I think I'll call it now that he has enough of a lead to take this.

2. Nobunari ODA - 81.81



A few stumbles and mistakes makes me think he was lucky to edge out Takahashi on this one - but can he hold it in the FS? Such a gorgeous triple axel on its own though - Oda has a knee bend on the landing of his jumps that is to die for.

3. Daisuke TAKAHASHI - 80.25



Loved loved loved this - this program absolutely plays to his strengths and is just so fun! Again, I question his positioning, behind Oda and so far behind Patrick Chan...hmm.

4. Artur GACHINSKI - 78.34



I'll leave this comment to John Kerr who posted on his Facebook - "who the hell is Artur Gachinski's choreographer!?! Talented kid but the routine is pile of crap!" Loved the use of Pink Floyd though - gave me Virtue and Moir/Delobel and Schoenfelder flashbacks!

5. Florent AMODIO - 77.64



Think Amodio could definitely move up over Gachinski on the long, since he has a really fun yet very consistantly well-performed long program. It was a nice performance, with a great opening jump sequence.

6. Takahiko KOZUKA - 77.62



Kozuka's second performance of this competition so far - due to weird ISU rules he had to skate in the preliminary qualifying round. Kozuka also has gorgeous fluidity on the ice, and a great audience-friendly program, but a botched triple axel landing left him out of medal spots. But I definitely wouldn't rule out a medal just yet.

7. Michal BREZINA - 77.50



I have been a huge fan of Brezina for ages as he has amazingly high jumps, but they weren't quite on today. But with only one point between him and fourth place (him, Kozuka and Amodio are so tight) there's bound to be a lot of movement tomorrow.

8. Tomas VERNER - 75.94



Tomas's program is so light and fun - but a fall on the quad, not so much.

9. Brian JOUBERT - 71.29



Joubert has been on the podium here for the last five years - pretty impressive considering how inconsistent he's been over the past half a decade. However, with performances like this he's never going to retain his world title - he recovered from his opening mistake well but he's twenty points behind Chan, ouch.

And the rest of the results are below (I.E Youtube is letting me down so cannot see the rest of the programs) The skaters below who are in bold advanced to the free skate tomorrow - commiserations to the others.
10. DENIS TEN - 71.00
11. Richard DORNBUSH - 70.54
12. Ryan BRADLEY - 70.45
13. Ross MINER - 70.40
14. Javier FERNANDEZ - 69.16
15. Kevin VAN DER PERREN - 68.34
16. Peter LIEBERS - 67.73
17. Anton KOVALEVSKI - 65.16
18. Samuel CONTESTI - 64.59
19. Kevin REYNOLDS - 64.36
20. Nan SONG - 63.78
21. Joey RUSSELL - 61.69
22. Jorik HENDRICKX - 60.74
23. Paolo BACCHINI - 58.96
24. Kim LUCINE MON - 58.81
25. Adrian SCHULTHEISS - 58.41
26. Viktor PFEIFER - 56.68
27. Min-Seok KIM - 56.19
28. Alexander MAJOROV - 54.24
29. Maxim SHIPOV - 50.10
30. Misha GE - 49.61
And here are the pairs result - I have yet to find any performances on Youtube yet. However I have to say my favourite skate was Volosozhar and Trankov's. They absolutely lived up to the hype, such a perfect match for partners, and he looks so much happier than he was when skating with Maria Mukhortova! Both Savchenko/Szolkowy and Pang/Tong were sublime - tomorrow is going to be close. Major props also go to Eric Radford - he and Meagan did a great job for their first international outing together, made even more impressive by how he skated the majority of the program with a broken nose due to an ill-placed elbow during the opening triple twist! Commiserations also go to Kemp and King; being British I always cheer them on, but just missing out on qualifying for the free skate must be devastating. Below are those who qualified.
1. Pang/Tong 74.00
2. Savchenko/Szolkowy 72.98
3. Volosozhar/Trankov 70.35
4. Bazarova/Larionov 64.64
5. Kavaguti/Smirnov 62.54
6. Takahashi/Tran 59.16
7. Duhamel/Radford 58.83
8. Yankowskas/Coughlin 58.76
9. Berton/Hotarek 57.63
10. Moore-Towers/Moscovitch 56.86
11. Evora/Ladwig 54.64
12. Hausch/Wende 53.90
13. Zhang/Wang 52.25
14. Dong/Wu 49.29
15. Kadelcova/Bidar 45.20
16. Zabijako/Kulbach 44.35

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