ISU Grand Prix Final Preview and Predictions (yes, predictions)

There are injuries/surgeries to talk about—namely would-be comebacker Evan Lysacek and, as of today, John Coughlin (of U.S. Pairs Champs Denney/Coughlin)...

And there are some especially interesting names turning up at the otherwise-lesser-known NRW Trophy in Dortmund this weekend—namely Michal Brezina, Savchenko/Szolkowy, and Yu-Na something...?

But the skating spotlight, for all intents and purposes, currently rests on the ISU Grand Prix Final in Sochi. Junior short programs get underway Thursday starting at 8:45AM Eastern time in the U.S., followed by 7+ hours of Junior/Senior action on both Friday and Saturday morning. I, for one, will not be following the Juniors as closely as I will the Seniors, but that shouldn’t stop you from paying attention to the ISU’s You Tube Channel as it downloads them in near-real time as they did throughout the JGP season. And Team USA’s chances for singles medals look pretty good—Jason Brown, Joshua Ferris, Angela Wang, Hannah Miller, and Leah Keiser make up nearly 50% of the entire singles roster.

As for Senior action (for which you’ll have to do a little more digging to find live video streams), I’ve opted out of the “wondering” I’ve done with earlier GP events (how can I “wonder” when over a half-dozen events have gone by already?!). Instead, I’m back to predictions. No explanations—yet—just predictions of the finishes for all four disciplines. Let’s see how much explaining I have to do after this weekend is over...

Men: 1) Patrick Chan 2) Yuzuru Hanyu 3)Daisuke Takahashi 4) Javier Fernandez 5) Takahiko Kozuka 6) Tatsuda Machida

Ladies: 1) Mao Asada 2) Ashley Wagner 3) Akiko Suzuki 4) Elizaveta Tuktamysheva 5) Kiira Korpi 6) Christine Gao

Pairs: 1) Volosozhar/Trankov 2) Kavaguti/Smirnov 3) Pang/Tong 4) Duhamel/Radford 5) Bazarova/Larinov 6) Moore-Towers/Moscovitch

Dance: 1) Davis/White 2)Virtue/Moir 3) Pechalat/Bourzat 4) Bobrova/Soloviev 5) Cappellini/Lanotte 6) Ilinykh/Katsalapov