Practice Session
Just a brief report tonight. It's been a long, long day. Todd was approximately 10 minutes late getting to his 8:15 AM practice, having gotten himself (and his Dad who was riding with him in the Toddmobile) bogged down in the Toronto rush hour traffic. Once on the scene, however, he entered the arena from the opposite end of the skater's entrance, removed his skateguards, and hopped over the boards onto the ice and started warming up. While warming up he skated over to the boards to greet a gent who was standing with Shae-Lynn Bourne on the sidelines, near one of the entrances. Upon closer inspection by the curious, the identity of the gent was revealed to be none other than Kurt Browning, cleverly disguised in a baseball cap.
Todd really didn't do a whole heck of a lot in this early morning practice. He chose his long program for the run-through, but then didn't really do much of a run-through to it. He did however end the session by landing an absolutely gorgeous quad, on only the second attempt!
The second practice session of the day began at 2:15 PM and Todd was in an unusually good humor. In fact, for some reason he (and Richard) seemed to spend a goodly portion of the session laughing. As a practice session, it went fairly well. He landed a triple Axel within seven minutes of taking the ice, then when it came time to try a quad he landed one on the second attempt (which success was greeted by applause from Yagudin, also on the ice at the time), then he followed that up almost immediately with a lovely quad/double toe combination.
He did a short program run-through this afternoon which gave us a preview of the new quadless jump plans for that program. Believe it or not (and I was able to confirm it this evening with the man himself) he plans to do a triple flip/triple toe as his combination jump, then a solo triple Axel and a solo triple Lutz. He does intend to try the quad again in the long program Saturday night.
Short Program draw order is much better for Todd than it was at Skate America - he will be skating 7th (1st in the second group); Yags will be skating 9th, while Takeshi Honda drew 2nd and Li fourth.
Todd has one practice session tomorrow, at noon; the men's short program competition begins tomorrow evening.
More reports from rinkside to follow tomorrow.
Short Program
Todd is indeed in second place and was one of only two skaters to skate clean. He and Yags skated comparable, but Yags had a higher base mark (his program included a clean quad).
Paul Martini did a great job of describing the elements, so I won't go into that, except to say that Fran said Todd landed a lovely 3flip/3toe combo. Said combo seemed a little "different" when it was reported to be in Todd's program, but worked out great in the actual competition. The short program, skated a bit cautiously this evening is indeed still the Xotika music, but is different than Skate America and the Masters in that the combo is different and the blue costume has already gone by the way side. Todd wore the Pity the Child costume this go around. As a side note, Todd is planning a trip to the ballet company costume department to be fitted for a new costume tomorrow while he is in town. We suspect this is the fitting for the new 13th Warrior costume, but that's not confirmed.
For those of you wondering, Todd is still planning to do the quad in free skate. If practice is any predictor though, Todd won't be needing them. Fran says that he landed the 4toe/2toe combo on only his third attempt. This feat took at least 15 attempts in Colorado Springs last week.
Todd has drawn to skate first in the final group for the long. He is pleased with this draw, even though Yags has drawn last. Todd is happy to be able to get out and skate on the "new" ice after the flood. He also seems happy with his performance tonight and is reportedly celebrating with his parents.
As for a few of the other skaters:
Li is so far down (10th I think) because, in Fran's words, "he blew every element". He went splat on quad, and after landing a 3 Axel, fell on the 3 toe part of the combo. He also fell out of double Axel. Fran speculated that he might be injured as his leg was in a tight wrap.
Honda landed the quad, but fell out of the 3 toe part of the combo as well.
Practice Session
Not a whole lot to report today, guys. Todd's practice session was relatively uneventful (after the one at Skate America the day before the final, this was a relief!). He didn't do a complete run-through of 13th Warrior and was not landing the quad with the kind of ease he'd been displaying earlier in the week (but he did land one during the session). He seemed relaxed and in a good mood nevertheless. He spent a lot of his practice time working on choreography with Olga. Very interesting.
To put everything in perspective, Yagudin didn't have a phenomenal practice session today either. In fact, none of the men did.
Todd is scheduled to skate tomorrow at exactly 10:03 PM, so everyone keep your fingers crossed.
Mens Free Skate
Apologies for the delay, but we got a little carried away celebrating.
The men's event was basically a splat fest with the first six skaters having varying degrees of disappointing skates. The most disappointing was Li. We wondered if he might be injured, but at the practice sessions he was observed landing clean quads. Chalk it up to nerves.
Then it was time for the second warm up group of the final six skaters.
Todd's warm-up went pretty well. He didn't land a quad, but he was able to warm up his other jumps including the triple Axel. He seemed focused and determined. Todd was first to skate so at least we didn't have to wait too long to see how it unfolded. His first jump was the quad combination. He was able to get the revolutions on the quad but wasn't able to check out successfully and put a hand down. As a result he didn't attempt the double toe as the second jump. His next planned jump combination was supposed to be the 3 Axel-3 Toe but he doubled the Toe. He landed a 3 Lutz, 3 Flip/double Toe. Todd had to hang on to the landing of the solo 3 Axel, he was leaning far forward and it looked like he was very close to putting a hand down, but from our view it looked like he was able to actually avoid putting the hand down. Since this jump was right in front of the judges, hopefully they would be able to clearly see a clean jump. Todd also landed a 3 Loop and a 3 Salchow for a total of 6 clean triples.
Todd's reaction at the program's conclusion indicated that he was very pleased with his performance. He was also happy with the marks he received:
T: 5.6 5.7 5.6 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7
P: 5.6 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.8
Now we had to wait for the remaining 5 skater's to see if Todd's 2nd place standing held and it did. Another surprise was that Matt Savoie managed to "pull a Todd" he pulled up from 5th after the short program to a win a bronze medal so that there were two Americans on the medal podium.
Needless to say we decided to hang around for the medals ceremony. The podium was shaped in the form of red maple leaves. The ladies medal ceremony took place before the men's ceremony so we were able to move to seats with a better view of the podium (right behind a bank of photographers).
Todd and Alexei were in rare form joking around as they took their places on the podium They proceeded to turn the wrong way on the medal podium and had to make a quick about face in the correct direction.
After the victory lap the medal winners stopped for the photographers in front of us to pose so we were able to get some great pictures, too.
The celebration continued back at the hotel until the wee hours of the morning. The exhibitions are set for later today and word has it that Todd will be skating The Glory.
