Men’s FINAL (Top 15)
Some very quick summaries, and sorry to say I haven’t studied the protocols yet so feel free to correct/confirm anything I put out here… sorry I couldn’t get this up sooner!
1) Chan, CAN (187.96/280.98 TOTAL)—not as perfect as Canadian Nationals, but still very well-deserved.
2) Kozuka, JPN (180.79/258.41 TOTAL)—he’s laid down a couple of spot-on beautiful free skates this season, and this was definitely one of them. Sooo excited to see him medal.
3) Gachinski, RUS (163.52/241.86 TOTAL)—OK, raise your hand if you’d guessed this teenager for bronze—or anywhere near the podium, for that matter. But admittedly he earned it.
4) Brezina, CZE (156.11/233.61 TOTAL)—I came in while this was in progress… did I see Brezina land TWO quads? (I know I saw him fall TWO times later on… probably stamina-related, with him barely competing this year.)
5) Takahashi, JPN (152.72/232.97 TOTAL)—At 4CC’s, Mark Ladwig suffered a boot malfunction that nearly took him and Amanda Evora out of competition. Here, Dice-K suffered a boot/blade malfunction (looked like the screws holding them together fell out or broke??) that nearly took him out of the event… and no better time to find this out, of course, than when you’re launching into a quad. He finished, but it was far from his best.
6) Oda, JPN (150.69/232.50 TOTAL)—At first I was thinking this was Oda’s best Worlds free skate to date… then I saw the scores and realized that must’ve been a triple/triple at the start, not a quad/triple like I thought. It wasn’t that he did badly… it’s that he didn’t do enough.
7) Amodio, FRA (152.04/229.68 TOTAL)—The last skater of the night was probably looking for a lot of whoopin’ and hollering by the time he got to the last couple minutes of his program. Instead he got a lot of distracted people wondering to themselves “Why on earth did he put vocals in his competitive free skate??”
8) Joubert, FRA (156.38/227.67 TOTAL)—Got a nice quad in, and stayed upright in general, but he was too far back for it to do him much good.
9) Dornbush, USA (151.88/222.42 TOTAL)—As with Nationals, he turned in a great, clean, everything-but-a-quad kind of performance to Sherlock Holmes. Probably never guessed he’d be the best-finishing American at this event when he was still competing Juniors just a handful of months ago!
10) Fernandez, SPAIN (149.10/218.26 TOTAL)—One of only two on this list that I haven’t seen yet. He skated very early, but apparently did pretty well with his Pirates program. When was the last time Spain had a guy in the top 10? Nice going, Javier!
11) Miner, USA (147.53/217.93)—I underestimated you, Mr. Miner… just slightly less content than Dornbush, but every bit as clean. I shall remember this going forward J
12) Verner, CZE (140.93/216.87 TOTAL)—This is the other one I missed. He was smiling big as I came in and saw him leaving the ice, but I guess that wasn’t representative of the skate. Too bad; he was having a pretty good comeback year and I was hoping he’d make the top 6.
13) Bradley, USA (142.26/212.71 TOTAL)-- Perhaps I overestimated Mr. Bradley. It was a flawed free skate for sure, but maybe, given all that’s transpired between January 2010 and now, 13th at Worlds is truly the best he can do.
14) Ten, KAZ (138.99/209.99 TOTAL)—Unfortunately, Denis Ten couldn’t hold onto the promise of his SP. Two wipeouts on two 3ax attempts did him in.
15) Liebers, GER (137.86/205.59 TOTAL)—Turns out Dornbush wasn’t the only guy here with a Sherlock Holmes free skate. In my opinion Liebers paled by comparison, but it was still a good clean effort that deserved to be rewarded.
2 comments:
Oda did a triple toe/triple toe to start and then a triple Axel/triple toe a few seconds later. He lost all the points (almost 14) for the second combo because that was his third triple toe. NO excuses for him this time.. when the jumps were that close together, he should have known he had to switch things around. The difference is enough to give him the bronze medal. This is the second time at a World Championship and about the fifth time in his career that he hasn't been able to figure out the rules on the fly.
You know, once I realized that wasn't a 4T at the start, I was thinking he'd subbed a 3Flip and wasn't paying attention to the 3Toe count. I WAS paying attention to his number of combos, and ironically thought he'd finally worked that part right! And yet he blew it again. Wow.
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