From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 02:09:26 -0500 (EST)
To: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu,
        rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU
Subject: SPOILERS:  Thursday report from Skate America
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

This is going to be pretty short and not terribly detailed since it's
very late and I'm tired.  Apologies if I leave out your favorite skater.

Practices:

Michelle Kwan had a shockingly bad practice this morning, taking
multiple hard falls on her triple lutz and loop.  Not sure what the
problem is; they say she often has bad practices at competitions but
manages to skate great when it really counts.  Her new long program looks
good, though.  It's quite similar in style to last year's.

Maria Butyrskaya looked very solid.  She is using "Malaguena" again
this year.  Hanae Yokoya also looks pretty good.  Her program has
interesting choreography but it seems mostly inward-directed and I
wonder if it'll really "work" on the audience.  Vanessa Gusmeroli's
circus program is also very cool.

Tonia Kwiatkowski is skating to Lizst's "Hungarian Rhapsody"; she was
making some typical Tonia mistakes (two-footing some of her jumps,
etc) but looked pretty much in control, the way she always does.
Sydne Vogel seemed relaxed and happy.

Both Scott Davis and Dan Hollander arrived late for their practice --
Scott missed his program runthrough entirely and Dan had to do his
with basically no warmup.  This is not the way you want to start out a
competition.  Scott never tried his triple axel at all in the
practice, as far as I could see, and while Dan was making several
attempts it was clear that he didn't have a real handle on it.


Compulsory Dance:

All I will say about this is that it seems to be impossible for more
than two couples to skate the Golden Waltz on the same ice, because
the pattern crosses itself in the corner.  There were several scary
near-collisions during the practices.


Pairs Short Program:

The judging for this event was wild, with very large spreads in the
marks for some of the pairs.  I was personally pretty amazed to see
the marks for Stiegler & Zimmerman being as low as they were; I wish I
knew what the judges saw that I didn't.  They're doing their "Weird
Tango" program from last year and it looked clean to me.  Lyons &
Wells skated to "El Condor Pasa", with triple salchows as opposed to
S&Z's double axels, but the programs seemed otherwise comparable to
me.  But I thought L&W were slower, their choreography and
presentation were kind of generic, and they didn't seem to be
*attacking* their program with the same intensity.

As for Kazakova & Dmitriev....  they are lucky to be in second place,
because their program was a mess from beginning to end.  She tripped
up on the landing of her triple toe, causing *him* to trip up.  Then
they had a major unison fault on their side-by-side spins.  I thought
the exit from their lift looked pretty strange and wondered if they
really intended it that way or if he had dropped her onto his shoulder
by mistake.  And finally, Artur fell on his butt doing some footwork
around the end of the rink.  They obviously got huge deductions for
all these mistakes, but marks for everyone else were so low as well
that it didn't drop them as much in the standings as it might have.
K&D certainly win the award for the most bletcherous costumes of the
day.  Imagine Artur encased in gaudy blue and yellow stripes with
Oksana in blue and neon with bows on her skates.  *shudder* Their
music is a disco version of "La Cucaracha".


Men's Short Program:

Todd Eldredge was way ahead of everybody else here.  Solid triple axel/
triple toe combination, and a good, jazzy program that he presented well.

The only other clean program came from -- surprise! -- Takeshi Honda.
He also did a triple axel/triple toe, with a triple loop for his solo
jump out of footwork, and he had strong, edgy footwork.  He wins the
Ruffle Award, too.  His program had a latin theme to it, and he went
for a white shirt with pastel ruffles on his sleeves instead of the
typical black and neon ruffles.

Alexei Urmanov did a triple axel/triple toe, too, but he couldn't quite
hold the landing of the second jump.  I also thought he hesitated way
too long on his lutz and the judges should have taken a deduction for
that, because it's supposed to happen immediately out of footwork.  We
were all confused by Urmanov's program; he was dressed in a kind of
military-looking black outfit with lots of gold sequins and the requisite
white gloves, but his music was some sort of technotrash that sounded
more like something he'd pick out for an exhibition than a competition
program, and didn't seem to have any obvious connection to the costume.

Zaggy and Millot both did clean triple axel/double toe combinations but
came to grief on other elements:  Zaggy on the lutz, Millot on the
double axel.  They both had very good programs and presentation.  Zaggy's
doing a tango and Millot's is a dramatic Verdi (I think) thing.

Scott Davis missed his combination entirely by popping the axel into a
single.  I was surprised that the judges trashed him quite as much as
they did in the marks because most folks seem to think he's got a good
program and he interprets it well....  He was getting things like 4.8's
for required elements and 5.4's for presentation, so even if he'd hit
the combination he still wouldn't have been in serious contention here.

As for Dan Hollander, he two-footed his triple lutz and then fell out
of his triple axel and had to take some turns or steps before doing a
"toe axel" as the second jump.  He has excellent footwork in this program
but I feel that his spins are still subpar.

To go with the Ruffle Award, I must also hand out a Hair Award to
Stannick Jeannette and his curly blond locks.  At times it seemed like
he had to peek out from behind his hair like a sheepdog....  (And the
runnerup in this category is none other than Pascal Lavanchy, whose
hair is almost as long as his partner's!)

Cat Report: the kitties won this round.  :-P

-Sandra



From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 01:50:57 -0500 (EST)
To: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu,
        rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU
Subject: SPOILERS:  Friday's doings at Skate America
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

Once again, it's late and I'm about to drop, so this is going to be
relatively quick....


Practices:

Much talk about what happened to Stiegler & Zimmerman's marks last
night.  Apparently their program was timed at 2:59 and they got hit
with both a deduction for going over and one for omitting the death
spiral (since it happened after the 2:40 limit); yes, they probably
would've been in first place otherwise.  Much speculation on how this
could have happened, since they used the same program at Nationals
last year without a hitch.  Other coaches were seen carefully timing
their skaters' music today.

Dan Hollander has reworked "Barber of Seville" into a long program,
with an added section from "Carmen" in the middle.  I believe Zaggy
was the only one of the guys to show up in costume, a lovely subdued
blue concoction with tasteful sequins.  Alas, his new program struck
me as being kind of blah.  Alexei Urmanov is doing "Princess of the
Circus" again.  He left all his jumps out of his runthrough, and
waited until Todd Eldredge was taking up his opening pose for *his*
runthrough to unleash a huge triple axel/ triple toe right in front of
Todd.  :-)  Todd's new program is better than last year's, IMHO.  It's
in the same rather bombastic style, but it had some quieter moments
that I felt showed some genuine artistic sensibility on his part.

Frank Carroll was sitting right behind me for part of the men's
practice, and he was saying some very complimentary things about Todd
and also about Takeshi Honda.  And Dick Button was raving about Alexei
Yagudin.  :-)

Excuse me for not saying much about the ladies' or pairs' practices.
They were kind of boring, or I was getting groggy from lack of
caffeine, or something like that.  I did revive after dinner.


Original Dance:

Tango time.  Krylova & Ovsiannikov were the clear winners here, even
in spite of a fall on her part.  Their dance managed to have both
sharp footwork and a smooth flowing quality about it.  I thought the
*fastest* and most powerful dancers out there, though, were Punsalan &
Swallow, whose tango was full of strong, bold, edges.  I didn't work
out the ordinals but I believe some of the judges may have put them in
front of Romanova & Yaroshenko, who did a more traditional "ballroom",
highly stylized tango.  Lobacheva & Averbukh's dance was distinguished
by some passages where he did all of the interesting steps; usually
it's the lady who has to twizzle like crazy and do all the hard stuff.

Yes, "bletcherous" is a real word, at least in hackish.  It's defined
in the Hacker's Dictionary:

   bletcherous

   /blech'*-r*s/ adj. Disgusting in design or function; esthetically
   unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is
   bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are
   misplaced.) See losing, cretinous, bagbiting, bogus, and
   random. The term bletcherous applies to the esthetics of the thing
   so described; similarly for cretinous. By contrast, something that
   is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective
   criteria. See also bogus and random, which have richer and wider
   shades of meaning than any of the above.

Well, tonight's Bletcherous Costume award goes to Sophie Moniotte, who
was apparently not content with falling out of her costume last night.
Tonight she was attired in a burgundy dress with asymmetric cut-outs,
some of them filled with the dreaded nude fabric in a shade that
obviously did not match the color of her own skin visible through
other cut-outs.  Adding to the effect, the dress had large poofy
things attached to her shoulder and hip.  (Remember Surya Bonaly's
blue costume from 1992?)  And if that weren't enough, Sophie's dress
also had big flappy tassels on the hem of the skirt and along the
sleeve.  Ugghhhhh.  


Ladies' short programs:

Michelle Kwan overcame her bad practices and skated a typically
good short program, the only real fault being that she once again had
very little speed through her combination.  Watch for the lovely
change-of-edge spiral she opens the program with.  Her program is
to "Dream of Desdemona" by Massanet, according to the papers.
Elegant burgundy costume with gold sparkly trim around the top.

The judges obviously had mixed opinions about Tonia Kwiatkowski, but
she wound up in second with a clean skate.  She's doing a showgirl
number in a black and gold costume with "tails", and her hair in a
ponytail instead of a bun.

Nice clean programs for Sydne Vogel and Hanae Yokoya, too.  I noted
that Sydne had a particularly lovely layback spin position while
Hanae's was pretty ugly.  But I think the thing that really made the
difference in the placement was Sydne's kind of sparkly personality
and presentation.  I thought Hanae's choreography was actually more
interesting, but her expression was so serious and inward-directed
that the program didn't seem to reach the audience.  (And then at the
end of the program when she was taking her bows she was all big
smiles!)

Maria Butryskaya, sad to say, self-destructed.  The combination she
tried was a double flip/triple toe, but she just didn't have the speed
and she fell on the triple toe.  And then she couldn't hold her triple
loop either, and her spin combination was awfully slow.  Her program
has a middle-eastern theme, BTW.

Hair Report time: Maria has abandoned the peroxide bottle and is back
to what I presume is her natural hair color.  OTOH, the latest Russian
woman to fall victim to the hair color fad, believe it or not, is
Irina Rodnina!  She's adopted a sort of an orange shade that isn't
quite as horrible as it sounds.


Cat Report:   :-)

-Sandra



From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 11:00:50 -0500 (EST)
To: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu,
        rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU
Subject: SPOILERS:  Saturday at Skate America
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

Better late than never.....


Pairs final:

They may only have placed third, but there's absolutely no doubt that
Stiegler & Zimmerman were the sensation of this event.  Peter Oppegard
has outdone himself with their "Sorcerer's Apprentice" routine.  Not
only is the concept itself brilliant -- John "controls" Stephanie
throughout the program, as if she is a puppet or in a trance -- but
the choreography is cleverly designed to show off their strengths and
disguise their weaknesses.  And adding to the furore, S&Z were the
victims of yet another music/timing glitch in the free skate.  When
they hit a pose with about 30-40 seconds left in their program, the
music man apparently thought their program was over and stopped their
music, and it took everyone a few moments to realize that they weren't
done yet!  They skated through to the end of the program without music
and got a huge standing ovation.  The referee then offered them a
chance to reskate the last bit with the music, which they accepted, so
they got a *second* standing ovation.  Their marks were once again lower
than many people seemed to think they deserved, but objectively they
still have some work to do on this program to clean up the unison
faults and perhaps crank up the difficulty on some of the elements.
On the positive side, their throws were great and their triple twist
is huge.

Lyons & Wells had the difficulty in their program but they made numerous
mistakes throughout -- they both missed the triple loops, for instance,
and she put her hands down on a throw.  It's also a much more generic
program (with a gypsy theme, similar to their old short program).

Kazakova & Dmitriev's free skate went much better than their short but
also had its share of mistakes; she doubled the toe loop and singled
the axel, and seemed to fall out of a pair pivot kind of move.  They
are still only doing a couple relatively easy lifts and mucho
faux-Natalia skate-grabbing stuff.  I don't really know what to make
of this pair; some of the things they do are brilliant, but taken as a
whole their skating is very uneven and they give the impression of
barely being able to hold it together.

Anyway, because of all the mistakes, it seemed like a tossup between the
top three pairs to me.  Depending on what you were looking for you could
have justifiably put any one of the three either in first or in third.
The rest of the field, though, was clearly very weak and not a factor in
the medals at all.


Men's final:

There's mixed news for the US men's team here.  Todd had a few
comparatively minor problems (like having trouble with his attitude
spin and one of his wild landings on his second triple axel) but is
looking invincible overall.  'Nuff said.

Dan Hollander just had a bad day that I'm sure he'd like to forget
about entirely.  He missed nearly all of his jumps, either falling out
or doubling them and was having serious problems with his spins as
well.  I think there is hope for him, though, because this is a good
program and the content is there if he can skate it cleanly.

For Scott Davis, though, I'm not so sure.  To tell the truth, when I
first saw him working on this program at Simsbury I was horrified;
it's that *bad*.  For one thing, the pieces of music he chose don't
seem to go together at all and the program is generic and superficial
as a result, without any kind of theme or unifying concept.  And a
technical fault of the program is that he spends far too much time
posing in front of the judges and does not get up much speed or cover
the ice at the ends of the rink except when he's setting up his jumps.
Maybe Oksana Baiul could get away with this in her 93/94 program, but
I think the standards are higher for men in this regard.  Anyway, in
this performance Scott blew his first couple of jumps but then seemed
to get his feet under him and landed a few good triples, although none
in combination.

Alexei Urmanov skated very well.  If he'd given this performance at worlds,
he would've come home with a medal.  The only real technical flaw was
that he "only" did a triple axel/double toe instead of the triple/triple
he'd been practicing.  His spins seem sufficiently fast and centered to
me, but I think he could improve some of the positions -- getting a little
better stretch and turnout of the free leg on his sitspin, for example.

Nobody I talked to was quite sure how Alexei Yagudin managed to wind
up in third place.  He landed most of his jumps but he skated very
slowly and cautiously through his program and without much expression,
his carriage was not the greatest, his footwork was easy, and some of
his spins were quite sloppy.  The other young sensation, Takeshi
Honda, had somewhat more trouble with his jumps, but in comparing
everything else Honda was clearly superior.  I was blown away by the
quality of the circular footwork sequence he did at the end of his
program; edgy, complex, and fast, fast, fast.  This kid has a natural
flow over the ice and wonderful expression.  If he keeps this up he
could be a dark-horse medal candidate in Nagano.

As for Zaggy, he started out going for the triple axel/triple toe,
two-footed the second jump, and things went downhill from there.  I
found his program more interesting on second viewing than on the first
(he's doing Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky" music), but I'm still
unsure that this will ever really catch people's attention.  Eric
Millot was having major jump trouble too; neither of his two triple
axel attempts worked, and he missed his lutz and only did a solo
triple loop instead of going for the combination.  Anyway, I think
the ordinals must have been pretty mixed up between Yagudin, Zagorodniuk,
Millot, and Honda, because none of them skated anything like a clean
program and they were all bunched in the 5.3-5.5 range.

Saturday's combined Hair and Costume award for the men goes to Stannick
Jeannette, he of the long, curly blond hair.  He skated to "Don Juan de
Marco" in a vaguely 18th-century costume with a ruffly shirt, and his hair
pulled into a ponytail with a black ribbon tied in a big bow.  Yeah!
Ruffles *and* a hair bow!  :-)


Free dance:

OK, I have to admit it: Ilia Averbukh is the Man Of My Dreams.  :-) In
most dance teams, it's the woman who's the focus of attention, but in
this case Averbukh completely stole the show from Lobatcheva.  His
expression is outrageous, and I loved it!  They had by far the most
entertaining dance of the event (a medley of some piece I didn't
recognize, "St James Infirmary", and "Hey Pachuco"), fast and furious
and funny.  It was great to see that this turned out to be an actual
*competition*, and not just a walkover for Krylova & Ovsiannikov, who
did a more traditional, dramatic rendition of "Masquerade Waltz" that
reminded everyone of Klimova & Ponomarenko's version.  Moniotte &
Lavanchy did a gypsy program that the crowd liked but that was clearly
not in the same class as either L&A or K&O's dance.

Big surprise: Punsalan & Swallow pulled up over Romanova & Yaroshenko.
P&S are doing another latin program, in their usual style with a lot
of speed, deep edges, and big, bold movements across the ice.  R&Y are
doing a jazz Bach program that was also fast and edgy, but not so much
as P&S, and also this style didn't seem to do much to express the
character of the music.

Embarassing Costume Problem Award:  Barbara Piton, with Angelika Krylova
as the runnerup.  Sophie Moniotte's dress, for a change, was actually
fairly ordinary-looking.  Neon orange seems to be the color of choice for
dancers this year.


Ladies' final:

Michelle Kwan won with a good, but not great, performance.  Her only
obvious mistake was popping the loop jump that had been giving her
tons o' trouble in practices all week, but I thought she looked slow
and tentative throughout the program.  The rumor is that she is having
boot or foot problems, and I surely did see her messing with her boot
several times in practices.

I do believe Tonia Kwiatkowski pulled off a triple/triple in her long
program, as well as attempting (but falling on) a triple salchow for
the first time that I can remember.  It wasn't the cleanest of
performances, but it was enough to hang on to second place.  The rest of
the program was typical Tonia stuff.

Third place went to Sydne Vogel although she had two falls towards the
end of her program and downgraded her final double axel to a single.
(I'm surprised she seemed to be having stamina problems since she
trains at altitude.)  Her carriage and presentation are surely
improving.  Her program is set to the David Foster piano concerto;
Paul Wylie fans may remember Foster's "Water Fountain" piece?  That's
the same theme he used in the concerto.  Anyway, to me this seems like
Sydne's first attempt at a grown-up program with real choreography,
and she's doing a good job with it.  She still hesistates too long in
setting up her jumps and tends to hunch a little, but other things she
does in this program are just lovely.  I think she's developed one of
the best layback spins around, for example.

Julia Lautowa's latin-theme program was notable primary for what I
thought was one of the more effective black and neon costumes I've seen.
She had mixed success on her jumps, and I noted that her final 
spin combination travelled wildly.

Hanae Yokoya was having major jump trouble as well; she couldn't land
either of her lutz attempts (and she definitely "flutzes", by the
way).  She also completely missed the neatest combination in her
program; in practice, she had been doing an axel/half loop/triple
salchow, and in the performance she fell out of the axel and didn't
even attempt the other jumps.  At the end of the program she almost
fell on a triple salchow that I think she may have stuck in as a
last-ditch effort to get some more content.

Jelena Sokolova pulled up a few places by managing to land a bunch of
good jumps, including a lutz and flip, in the first half of her
program.  (At the end of the program she seemed to be running out of
steam and had an embarassing fall on a death drop.)  In between the
jumps, though, she seemed very slow and tentative, with very simple
connecting elements, and looking like she had no idea what to do with
her arms or upper body.  I think she must be very young.  BTW, I think
she bears an amazing resemblance to Nina Petrenko.

As for Maria Butyrskaya, this was a disaster.  She barely hung onto a
lutz and a loop and popped or fell out of everything else.  She had
missed her practice earlier in the day, apparently because she never
found out about the schedule change.  I wondered if she was perhaps
sick or something, too, because when I saw her on Thursday she was
landing things but she seemed to get worse and worse from one day to
the next.


Well, I gotta get moving if I want to get back up to Springfield in
time for the exhibitions.  The kitties were good again yesterday; they
seem to have figured out that I *am* coming home eventually every
night, even if it isn't until after midnight.  And Slinky was kind
enough to let me sleep in this morning without doing her normal
alarm-clock act.  Having a cat walking around on your head is not
always the most pleasant way to wake up.....

-Sandra



From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 20:44:26 -0500 (EST)
To: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu,
        rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU
Subject: SPOILERS:  Skate America exhibition, etc
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

OK, last report from Skate America....

Contrary to what some people were thinking, there was no problem
getting in and out of town for the show.  Bill Clinton isn't even
scheduled to be there until after 9pm, hardly a conflict with an early
afternoon show.  They did have the street in front of the arena
blocked off but the parking garage was open and accessible from
the entrance on the other side.

And this exhibition was very, very short -- the show started at 1:30
and ended a few minutes after 3pm, and that included a 20 minute break
to make ice!  Moreover, several of the skaters trotted out their short
programs instead of doing a genuine exhibition program.  If I'd paid
$40 for a single-event ticket to this, I would've been pretty ticked
off.  As it was I hardly felt it was worth the trouble of driving up
to Springfield and back.

Dan Hollander opened the show doing his janitor program.  He was still 
struggling with his jumps, but as usual the crowd loved it.

Jelena Sokolova was one of the skaters who did her short program,
complete with the triple lutz and an amazingly elaborate double axel
entered from a spiral and counter and executed with her arm over her
head.  She seemed to be able to put more feeling into this program
than her long, I must say.

Lyons & Wells did something that was either the same "purple program"
they were doing last spring or something very much like it, but in
slightly different purple costumes this time.  This is the one with
all of the adagio lifts.  It was quite effective.

Punsalan & Swallow were introduced as "America's Skating Sweethearts".
I thought that was Meno & Sand?  :-P  The skated their French program
that they did on the TOC, and I thought it looked even better than
when I saw it last spring.  They've obviously had a chance to fine-tune
it from touring with it all spring and summer.

Zaggy did his tango short program, hitting the triple axel but still
struggling with the lutz.  I really like this program, though.  It's
everything that Scott Davis's tango program from last year was trying
to be but wasn't.

Moniotte & Lavanchy came out dressed, for once, in simple, tasteful
costumes in plain black, and skated a program to "Schindler's List".
Their big trick in this was an adagio lift where Sophie is upside-down.
It was quite effective, as was the program as a whole.

Alexei Yagudin's exhibition program is the one that made the show
worthwhile for me, because you had to be there -- I don't think words
are adequate to describe it.  He was wearing black leggings, a grass
skirt and tiara, and had "war paint" on his face and bare chest.  He
was also carrying some ears of dried corn that he tossed into the
stands at the beginning of his program.  No, I am NOT making this up!
The skating was pretty lightweight; lots of wiggling his tush to funky
music, made all the more emphatic by the grass skirt, of course.  And
all the time, he was dripping pieces of his skirt and husks from the
corn all over the ice.  They sent some of the flower girls around after
he was done to pick up after him, but I wouldn't have been surprised
if they'd missed some pieces.

"The very lovely Sydne Vogel" (as opposed to "the very athletic Sydne
Vogel" or "Sydne the damn good skater", grumble) skated next, to "Send
in the Clowns".  Not a good program, jump-wise, as she overrotated the
triple toe and fell on the double axel.  I wondered if Alexei's
costume leftovers may have caused the problem on the axel, in
particular.  Besides the lovely layback, she also has a very good
layover camel spin that she included in this program.

Lobatcheva & Averbukh closed out the first half of the show with an
exhibition program to "This Business of Love" (complete with Ilia in
a hat and a jacket in a bright shade of green, an obvious parody of
Viktor Petrenko's use of this same music), and modified version of 
the last section of their free dance.   One thing I noticed was that
when they did their free dance (in fact, when *all* of the couples did
their dances) they aimed everything right at the judges and those of
us sitting on the opposite side of the rink mostly just got to see their
backs, but part of their modifications for doing it as a show piece 
included repositioning themselves during some of the elements to face
in different directions so everyone could see them better.  Smart move.

After the intermission, Alexei Urmanov skated his Beatles program from
the TOC.  I thought he kind of got screwed by being assigned to skate
right after the break because many people were still out their seats
and they didn't make any kind of preliminary announcement to warn
people that the intermission was over and they were about to start.
Anyway, Alexei did a good job, landing a triple salchow, flip, and toe
loop.

Stiegler & Zimmerman skated to some hard rock music, dressed in white
T-shirts and black pants (tight black shorts for her).  Technically,
the highlight was a huge throw which Stephanie had to two-foot a little
in order to hang on to.  There was a lot of jiggling and wiggling in
this number.

Tonia Kwiatkowski came out in a 2-piece black costume with a halter top
and fringy skirt, and skated another program to rock music with lots
of jiggling and wiggling.  

Kazakova & Dmitriev skated their "Zarathustra" program that we'd seen
at last year's Europeans gala.  They certainly seemed much more 
comfortable with this program than with either of their competition
programs, and that adagio lift at the end was really effective.

Michelle Kwan skated the "Winter" program that she had been doing on
tour in Canada earlier this fall.  A typical clean program from her,
including a triple lutz.

Krylova & Ovsiannikov skated their tango again for their exhibition.
This time she did not fall.

Finally, Todd Eldredge came out and did "This is the Moment" again.
It was a powerful performance, including a triple axel!  He got a
well-deserved standing ovation.  As I said, I really think that Todd
is finally starting to get a handle on the artistic side of his
skating.

And that was the show.  There was basically no closing number, the
skaters just came out one by one and were re-introduced as they did a
trick, and it was all over.  As I said, it was very short.  I thought
they might at least have gotten the Haydenettes back to give an
exhibition or something like that to fill it out.  I also thought they
could've asked a few more non-medalists, notably Eric Millot and
Takeshi Honda, to participate.


I also have a couple of notes I forgot to include in the report on
Saturday's doings that I posted this morning.

First of all, about Michelle Kwan.  It's clear to me that Frank
Carroll & co have taken the approach that you don't mess with success.
Both her short and long programs are obviously derivative of last
year's versions, in terms of both structure and theme.  The main
difference I see is that last year's programs seemed to me to be
play-acting grown-up, while this year Michelle seems to be bringing a
genuine maturity and depth to her skating that I did not see a year
ago.  This is good, but looking ahead to next year I think she's going
to have to take a bigger risk and do something a little different if
she wants to keep things fresh.

My second note is a more frivolous one.  I've added Jeffrey Langdon to
my list of Rotationally Challenged Boys With Nice Camel Spins.  :-)

-Sandra