Thursday 28 April 2011

Lyrics and loose screws - the World mens freeskate

Results results results! What a mixed bag of performances...if anyone put Artur Gachinski as their bronze medal prediction I will be very surprised.

1. Patrick Chan 280.98

What a skate - beautiful, nuanced interpretation of Phantom. Plus those quads look like triples...and that is a good thing!

2. Takahiko Kozuka 258.41

Also a great skate from Kozuka, so solid on his jumps and a well-deserved bronze medal.

3. Artur Gachinski 241.86

Gachinski totally dark-horsed this one, but anyone else just see him as baby Plushenko? Needs his own identity, which I think should start with a haircut!

4. Michal Brezina 233.61

Two quads and two falls - you don't see that very often. Definitely time to retire that "An American in Paris" routine though.

5. Daisuke Takahashi 232.97

Oh, Daisuke....boot problems are so harsh. Definitely should have been allowed to start from the beginning, and he skated very well considering the disruption.

6. Nobunari Oda 232.50

Oda's performance was pretty good, but an extra triple toe that wasn't allowed made him drop in places.

7. Florent Amodio 229.68

Florent used the lyrical version of his program, but was not given the mark deduction which is usually reserved for doing so. Breaking the rules seems uncalled for, but then it does fit with his skating style, which often seems confident to the point of cocky. It wasn't his best skate, jump-wise, but it is SUCH a great program, especially for the audience.

8. Brian Joubert 227.67

Brian Brian Brian. So proud of him for hitting a clean free skate, but sadly wasn't enough for a medal place for the sixth consecutive year. Maybe next year in Nice? Or maybe not.

That's all I got to see (due to Eurosport absolutely "snooker-ing" us) but the rest of the results are below. What did you think of the competition?
9. Richard Dornbush 222.42
10. Javier Fernandez 218.26
11. Ross Miner 217.93
12. Tomas Verner 216.87
13. Ryan Bradley 212.71
14. Denis Ten 209.99
15. Peter Liebers 205.59
16. Anton Kovalevski 201.64
17. Kevin van der Perren 197.10
18. Samuel Contesti 196.40
19. Jorik Hendrickx 188.24
20. Kevin Reynolds 187.23
21. Paolo Bacchini 183.13
22. Nan Song 176.09
23. Kim Lucine 171.93
24. Joey Russell 168.73

Also here are some post-free skate interviews from the top placers, courtesy of Universal Sports. Not particularly insightful, but definitely worth a watch.