I did miss a large chunk of the middle of the day, but from what I did say, I will say I enjoyed watching Sectionals a good deal more than Trophée Eric Bompard,especially the singles. Although I missed the majority of the dance for both anyway, and about the only senior pair I saw at Sectionals was Castelli & Tran’s free. Still amusing myself by the thought that they may well win Nationals, simply because it’s that wide open, though obviously they’d have to skate a lot cleaner there than they did this weekend. My favorite performance to watch might have actually been Christina Cleveland, the girl who defied the odds to make Nationals out of Midwesterns. Hope her long at Nationals doesn’t get embargoed. Though I feel for Barbie Long, expected to make it and missing out by seven hundredths.
Everyone seems mad Maxim Kovtun won both of his events, and will very possibly be the highest-ranked man at the GPF, and I agree it is unfortunate, but what can you do? He undisputedly deserved both golds. But with a thick field at the Finale, it’s more likely a better man will step up and win there.
As for the American men, I don’t think we should expect anything big from any of them for a while. It seems there are a zillion guys who could take over and take the top, and none who are actually likely to-it looked for a moment like Jason Brown might, but now that’s been thrown right back into doubt again. Granted, it would be nice if Jeremy made it to Worlds and then put out his best and got onto the podium there, but he seems to have that odd-numbered year curse still working against him.
And for ladies, it’ll be interesting to see what Gracie does next win; unless Murakami skates a lot better than she did in China or Miyahara suddenly rotates everything, if she doesn’t win there’s really no excuse. I don’t even know what to make of Ashley anymore. The judges still seem to like her if her PCS are any indication, but the tech panels seem to have turned against her big time. Now it’s up in the air whether she’s going to make the GPF, and I’m not sure if she wouldn’t be better off bunkering down at home and drilling her jumps aka Evan Lysacek in 2008.
Meanwhile, I’m starting to wonder if anyone can stop Elena R from winning the world title this year(or stop whichever three Russians go from sweeping, but there it’s more possible someone could have a bad skate, or Gold could put it together, or Ashley could rotate all the jumps again, or some other American or Japanese girl could have the competition of her life). Though then again, it’s anyone’s guess what becomes of her next season.
Glad to see Ksenia Stolbova & Fedor Klimov switched to the French version of Notre Dame de Paris for skating in France, but could they please keep with it? The English version of Tu Vas Me Detraite especially really should be used as little as possible. Also part of me is a little disappointed Sui & Han didn’t take it after having such a great skate.
Oh, and while I gave up on the Warsaw Cup stream pretty quickly, yay for Lubov I & Dylan Moscovitch, winning their first event together! With a small field, granted, but Fedorova & Miroshkin aren’t nobody.
We Need More Fruit 