Worlds 2010 Gala Guide: The Singles

So they didn’t make it the Universal TV coverage, and only still photos from it are on the Universal website. But in case you were wondering, here are a whole bunch of links you might like…

NOTE: some of these performances are tainted by excessive commentary, chatter, or whatever was said. For those who think Hamilton or Button talk too much during a performance… you’d be pleading to hear them after tolerating a little of this. If anyone finds “quieter” links, please share!


Carolina Kostner finished 6th but got to perform, apparently, because she’s Italian… skated to a female cover of Ain’t No Sunshine about as well as she’s skated to anything lately, which is to say… well, you know.

Cynthia Phaneuf (finishing 5th) did great with a twisted, jazzy cover of Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams. I wonder if she ever imagined she’d make the cut to skate the Worlds Gala this time? She was 15th last year.

Miki Ando (finishing 4th) ah, a routine to Mozart’s Requiem that sort of seems to tell her own life story of chasing a dream, not getting it, trying again, etc… complete with a 15 second break with her just laying on the ice motionless (that’s the home-from-2006 Olympics part, in my interpretation).

Laura Lepisto (finishing 3rd) is in white but has a black hood/scarves of some kind she’s using as props…apparently it’s a Zorro-inspired number… they flutter like flags as she goes around a round of jumps, then she sets them down and does the rest of her skate. Oh, then she goes & gets them again after about a minute. Welcome to rhythmic gymnastic figure skating, y’all. Music is Tina Arena.

Kim Yu-Na (finishing 2nd) is doing the same Meditation piece NBC showed us in Vancouver. Looks very similar, including the popped lutz.

Mao Asada (finishing 1st) is in black and fuschia and brandishing a fierce fan as she skates to Paganini’s Capriccio #24. It’s definitely props day at the Gala. Someone should have told Kim; she could have done Meditation with a cage of live birds. Speaking of Asada though… did you hear that according to a recent Phil Hersh article, she is "looking for a new coach after two seasons with Russia's Tatiana Tarasova"...?

And the guys were there too…


Samuel Contesti (finished 7th) is here for the same reasons Kostner is… and skates to a cowboy-themed piece that includes the ever-charming Cotton-eyed Joe. But he does an even poorer job of checking his landings than he did in competition and steps out of most everything. Still cute if you’re a fan.

Jeremy Abbott (finished 5th) skated to Michael Buble’s cover of At This Moment. Unfortunately, if you click his name you’ll see that the audio’s been disabled on the clip I’ve got here (and I couldn’t find another one). You could always check and see if his Nationals version of the same routine is still available… (UPDATE: for reasons I don't get, clicking on the Jeremy link take you to Joubert's program instead. I tried fixing it, but it's not working. Sorry about that! You can put "Jeremy Abbott 2010 Worlds Gala" into your You Tube browser if you really want to see it... he did great except for a fall on his last jump (triple toe); not bad for someone who'd mentioned on Twitter that he'd "jacked his hip in practice" and might be doing "the first ice DANCE solo in history"!)

Michal Brezina (finished 4th) – this is one of the clips that really suffers from the overchatter, but somewhere in the background you can hear that he skated to Michael Buble’s Feeling Good (This is where I’m compelled to remark that to me, Buble is a poor man’s Harry Connick Jr., and I say that well aware of the irony as most consider Connick Jr. a poor man’s Frank Sinatra. Hmm. Maybe we just need more skaters using Sinatra…)

Brian Joubert (finished 3rd) does an uptempo routine very similar to his Rise SP (it’s Sandstorm by Darude). There appear to be some classic sick footwork sequences in it; sadly, the camera shots used for these parts were too wide to tell for sure (ugh, the directing on these feeds… another post for another time).

Patrick Chan (finished 2nd) takes on Coldplay’s Vive la Vida (and had some jump trouble, though he was far from the only one). Interesting choice for him; I wouldn’t have guessed he’d go so contemporary. The choreography was interesting at times but he seemed rushed at other times.

Daisuke Takahashi (finishing 1st) skated to Luv Letter by DJ Okawari, which a nice lyrical mid-tempo piano number that suits him well. He landed 3 lovely triples and didn’t look anything close to tired like most of the pack.

Next post will cover the pairs and dance teams that skated the Gala…