Post-Olympic Grad Skating School is Back in Session... Group 2, Pairs Free Skate

Today, I’ll pick up where I left off on March 17, sharing notes I made when watching back the early groups of pairs from their Vancouver free skate. Not everyone in this batch went to Worlds this year, but if they did, I included their Worlds placement as well.

Again, let me know if you took a look at/had thoughts on any of these…

Vanessa James/Yannick Bonheur, France (ages 22/27)-- looking better than average here skating to one of the updated Romeo & Juliets… pretty powerful, nice throws! And lifts! Really good skate for them… unfortunately their last spin netted them zero points (called “non valid”) so they didn’t score as highly as they could… but it wouldn’t have pulled them past #13 (Denney/Barrett) who were quite a bit ahead of them.
FINISHED 14TH AT OLYMPICS; 12th AT WORLDS.


Anais Morand/Antoine Dorsaz, Switzerland (ages 17/21)-- kind of strange. Skated to Once Upon a Time in America, but what was the tan plaid suspender look all about? Several hiccups in jumps & throws.
FINISHED 15th AT OLYMPICS; 13th AT WORLDS.


Vera Bazarova/Yuri Larionov, Russia (ages 17/23 and I badly want to nickname them Bazanovva):
Skated to 7 Years in Tibet… really nice carry lift… good spins & interesting spirals… throw jumps are weak right now.
FINISHED 11th AT OLYMPICS; 8th AT WORLDS.


Tatiana Volosozhar/Stanislav Morozov, UKR-- (ages 23/31) I've decided Morozov looks more like a linebacker (football) than pairs skater; maybe Volosozhar did too, for they have split since Vancouver and she's now paired with Maxim Trankov. Anyway, these two seemed to have a fair amount of power and cohesion, but I’m just plain uncomfortable watching him in particular… here, he blew the back end of their first SBS jumping pass and I wondered about the rest of the performance—though it turned out OK for the most part. Their throw 3salchow was especially lovely. Considering the “yikes” factor at seeing those electric blue, superhero unitards from their SP, I’ll pray that the new pairing of Volosohzar/Trankov breeds better costume instincts.
FINISHED 8th at Olympics.


Nicole Della Monica /Yannick Kocon, ITA—(ages 20/23) Skated to The Mission in Cornflower blue… really nice 2 axel SBS sequence… seems to have good speed but some little mistakes throughout I think.
FINISHED 12th at Olympics.

I think the next time I run a session of POGSS I’ll move on to feature the lower groups of the Vancouver Men’s Final… unless I get a request for something else, that is.

For the Clip of the day we’ve got James/Bonheur’s free skate from this year’s Euros… this is still listed at Wikipedia as their season’s best score. It’s not without big flaws—he fell out of an SBS jump, and she fell off her edge on their first attempt at the death spiral, creating one of those messy moments where they had to let the music catch up while they recovered. But their SBS 3salchows, their throws, and their overall presentation is pretty impressive.