by Fran Buhman
Monday Practice
As expected, Todd arrived in Salt Lake City last night, checking into the hotel around 11 pm, about the time your faithful reporter was crawling into bed
The really big news on the Todd front concerns 13th Warrior. Most of you will be thrilled and delighted to know that the Amish Klingon costume has been relegated to the dustbin of history. A new costume is on the horizon, hopefully for Worlds, but in the meantime the old 13th Warrior costume has been resuscitated. Also, the program has been rechoreographed so that the quad will now come much later rather than at the start. The program now opens with the triple axel/triple toe combination, followed by the triple flip/triple toe combination, followed by the triple lutz (or triple lutz/triple toe if one of the previous combinations doesn't come off as planned). *Then* comes the quad, followed by the solo triple axel, followed by the triple loop and finally the triple salchow. This way, if he misses the quad it will come at a point where he will already (hopefully
We had a chance to see how the new jump arrangement worked and looked at this afternoon's practice session. The men had their first session at the Delta Center this afternoon. It was a sp/lp session (skater's choice as to which program music would be played) and as the session at the Delta tomorrow is a short program session and both sessions on Thursday will be at the Steiner, today's session was really the only chance the men had for a complete long program run-through on competition ice on other than the day of competition itself (when no one in their right mind would choose to do a complete run-through). Ergo, not surprisingly, most of the men opted for their long program music and many, including Todd, attempted complete run-throughs. Todd's effort was pretty darn good, all things considered. The opening triple axel/triple toe came off very nicely, as did the subsequent triple flip/triple toe and solo triple lutz. The quad was tripled (technically producing three triple toes, but after two triple triples, who cared?), but the second triple axel was landed right afterward beautifully. A nice triple loop followed, and then of course the next scheduled jump ended up as a kind of doubled pop - the next jump being, yes, you guessed it, Todd's favorite jump and mine, the triple salchow. However, a spot for a final jump remained, which spot would ordinarily be filled with a double axel, and since he had already done too many triple toes, he ended the program by repeating the attempt - this time successfully. Before the run-through and after it, he did manage to land several quads - for a grand total of three altogether.
As for the rest of the competition, everyone is present now except Michael Weiss (who as far as I can tell is not even in the city yet) who was also the only major player not present for any of the day's practice sessions. Min Zhang joined his Chinese colleagues today and I have to say I am *very* impressed with this guy, even if he doesn't seem to be terribly consistent with his jumps. Yunfei Li did demonstrate he does have a triple axel, but he's far from consistent with it and his rather questionable technique is probably the reason why. Chengjiang Li looked strong again today and left us wondering if he's planning to do a quad salchow in his short program, save it for his long, or keep it in reserve altogether. The three Japanese were once again all over the place and generally all over and on the ice as well, as their jump problems continued, while the Canadians were kind of up and down. After a couple of misfires, Sandhu unleashed a quad sal/triple toe that earned a very vocal expression of appreciation from his teammate Ben Ferreira - here again, I have no idea if this is still a work in progress or if Sandhu is planning to try this jump in competition any time soon. I could see a lot of improvement in Sandhu, especially with respect to his speed in general and the speed of his spins, but his jumps seemed kind of on again, off again. Ben Ferreira looked much stronger today and also seems to have improved quite a bit since I last saw him at Skate Canada. Jayson Denommee, on the other hand, continues to have jump problems, and is not looking terribly good, IMO. Finally, Matt Savoie took a few more spills today than he did yesterday, but on the whole he is continuing to look rather good.
Todd has two practice sessions scheduled for tomorrow. The first is a free skate practice at the Steiner Rink at 1:10 pm, the second is a short program practice at 5:00 pm at the Delta Center.
Well, that's all for now from the trenches. More tomorrow, hopefully beginning with the short program draw in the morning (it's scheduled for 9:30 am, SLC time).
Tuesday Practice
Today saw Michael Weiss' first appearance in Salt Lake City and he was actually present for both practice sessions today.
The first of these sessions began at 1:10 pm in the Steiner rink and was a free skate practice. Prior to his run-through, Todd went through all the jumps and managed to land a quad on the third attempt. The run-through itself was not quite as stellar as yesterday's, but still was not a bad effort at all. He began with a solo triple axel rather than the planned triple axel/triple toe, did a triple flip/double toe, and then the solo triple lutz. The quad attempt resulted in a fall-out, but he then rallied to land a triple axel/triple toe, but then popped the loop, actually managed to land a nice triple sal and then ended the program with a triple toe to give himself a total jump count of seven triples and an almost quad. Weiss looked rather sluggish overall and like he really didn't want to be there. He landed a quad/triple toe at one point, but also botched a number of triple axels and triple lutzes - he didn't attempt anything close to a complete run-through.
The afternoon session began at 5:00 pm and was a short program practice in the Delta Center. Todd landed a nice triple axel and an equally nice quad within about 6 minutes of taking the ice, and although his music was the first to play, he did a complete run-through that not only was flawless, but which also contained a quad/double toe rather than the expected triple flip/triple toe. I rather expect that now that he knows he is skating last, he is probably reconsidering the decision to stick with the flip/toe regardless. I expect he will wait to see how he feels during warmup and take into consideration how the other guys skated as well (considering that all of his major competitors will have skated by then). He completed what was a very good session with a few more quads, as well as a triple axel/triple toe and a triple lutz/triple toe. Meanwhile, Weiss began what promised to be a complete run-through but stopped when he tripled the opening quad. He did not have a particularly good session. Matt Savoie, on the other hand, looked fairly good overall, although he did pop the triple axel during his run-through. As for the remaining competitors, the Chinese (especially Chengjiang Li) continue to look good, the Japanese continue to have serious jump problems and Sandhu and Ferreira continue to look fairly good, with a few falls and misfires here and there.
The men regroup tomorrow and practice in their starting order groups. Which means of course that Todd will be skating in the last group, which is scheduled to take the ice at Steiner at 1:30 pm. The men's short program competition begins tomorrow night at 7 pm Mountain Standard Time (9 pm on the East Coast), with Todd scheduled to take the ice at approximately 9:42 pm (11:42 on the East Coast). It might be a while before I am able to return to my room to file a report, but I will be calling Christie with the results as soon as I can get to/turn on a cell phone
Edit note: This is a phone report that Fran called in to Christie
Mens SP
Todd was last to skate and landed 3 flip/3 toe combination (barely held on to the toe) 3 axel and 3 lutz out of fw. No problems noted on footwork and spins were great as usual.
Todd's marks:
Technical 5.7 5.8 5.6 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.6 5.6 5.7
Presentation 5.6 5.8 5.7 5.8 5.7 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8
Standings after the short program:
1. Todd Eldredge USA
2. Chenjiang Li CHN
3. Matt Savoie USA
4. Takeshi Honda JPN
5. Yamato Tamura JPN
5. Michael Weiss USA (iskater.com showed as 6th but Fran says tied for 5th)
7. Ben Ferreira CAN
That is as far as I remember.
Fran says the decision to forget the quad was made this afternoon after Todd had a horrible practice session and got extremely frustrated. He left practice early. His warmup was much better with 3 flip/3 toe, 3 axel, and 2 3 lutzes after first doing a double.
But after the short he was really happy, doing the fist pump and pointing to faces he recognized in the crowd. He bowed to the non-judges side first. Paul Martini remarked on iskater.com that Todd got the only standing ovation of the night.
Other skaters:
Chengjiang Li landed quad toe and 3axel/3toe, but blew his 2 axel Matt Savoie landed 3 flip/3 toe, 3 axel, and 3 flip Michael Weiss landed a 3 toe instead of the quad and recovered by landing a 3 axel/3 toe, but had a struggle on the 2 axel.
Thursday Practice
Todd had one practice session today, at 3:45 pm at the Steiner rink, and there's not a whole lot to say other than that it was pretty terrible. On the other hand, the practice session he had at Steiner on the morning of the short program competition was equally terrible, so I daresay there's no need to panic here. Actually, I didn't think any of the top guys looked especially spectacular today.
On a brighter and lighter note, Todd participated in the Olympic Torch relay ceremony this evening at around 6:15 pm. A hearty band of valiant Todd fans gathered for the occasion (namely, Fran, Mary, Kellie, Leanne, Autumn, Carol and Maia) and came perilously close to freezing to death waiting for the festivities to begin. Finally, Todd came out accompanied by several members of the SLC Olympic organizing committee and a couple of sponsor representatives (from Coca Cola and Chevrolet) and he was wearing a SLC Olympic jacket given him by the OC. Everyone gave a short speech and Todd was last up. He had a written speech, but wearing neither hat nor gloves and visibly freezing to death himself (it was COLD out there, folks!), he managed to get through the short speech with the help of a few pauses to refer to his notes. All in all, a very credible job. After the speeches we were all treated to a display of fireworks that both illuminated and illustrated the route of the Olympic torch (this was on the small ice rink at the Plaza and is somewhat hard to describe) followed by full-fledged fireworks overhead.
Very, very impressive and conducive to generating a bit of excitement over the upcoming Olympics.
Todd has a practice session Friday afternoon at the Delta Center beginning at 12:30 pm (SLC time). For those of you who like to keep track of these things, he is scheduled to take the ice for his free skate Friday evening at exactly 9:51 pm (11:51 pm EST). The men's competition is scheduled to end at approximately 10:35 pm (12:35 EST) so it may be a rather long night for some of you on the East Coast
