Trophee Eric Bompard finds itself in Bordeaux
this weekend rather than the traditional Paris !
Will there be other surprises? Will each skater take a bow when announced for
their warm up, like last year? And will that cool guy who’s always sketching
the TEB skaters still be around? Answers to those and other outlying questions
will arrive by Friday afternoon. Here are some predictions in the meantime:
MEN’S PREDICTIONS
Gold—Tatsuki Machida (JPN)
Silver—Maxim Kovtun (RUS)
Bronze—Richard
Dornbush (USA
Dark Horse: Yan Han (CHN)
With just a couple weeks to go in the initial 6-week stretch
of the Series, we start to see previous podium winners resurface. How will they
fare when pitted against each other—for the second time, in some cases? Machida
(along with Takahito Mura) started the season with a stunning 1-2 punch from Japan ,
and I’m looking forward to another marvelous effort from him. Kovtun won the
now-infamous men’s event at Cup of China a couple weeks ago, but had been so thrown
by The Grand Collision (as IFS Magazine’s calling it) that he didn’t seem to
give his victory much value when he spoke about it. I hope he ends up feeling
better about this week’s results, even if it leaves him with silver. And I’ve
gone ahead and put Dornbush in bronze position because Yan has to be one of the
truest Wild Card picks this week (1st event back since the crash!
Has he really recovered enough to compete well?). Dornbush, on the other hand,
has proven that medals can happen when you nail a quad in your lovely Coldplay
FS...
LADIES PREDICTIONS
Gold—Elena Radionova (RUS)
Silver—Julia
Lipnitskaia (RUS)
Bronze—Ashley Wagner
(USA
Dark Horse: Courtney
Hicks (USA USA
Another GP event, another Russian teen for the win? Sure
seems likely to me. And with Radionova and Lipnitskaia the ones in question,
I’m giving the nod to the former. For the record, though—while Lipnitskaia
comes here on the heels of giving one of her (self-described) worst-ever free
skates, I don’t expect her to keep on crumbling. Leave points on the table,
maybe. But there’s got to be a lot of strength, mental and physical alike, amid
all that flexibility... don’t you think? Meanwhile, I look forward to the strong
U.S. women in
this event skating very well. Just not well enough, judicially speaking, for
the top spots.
PAIRS PREDICTIONS
Gold— Stolbova/Klimov
(RUS)
Silver—Sui/Han (CHN)
Bronze—James/Cipres (FRA)
Dark Horse: Scimeca/Knierim
(CHN)
With Stolbova/Klimov looking as strong as they did a week
ago, it’s hard to begrudge them this gold prediction—even if the back-to-back
events exhaust them a bit. Sui/Han could lock up their own GP Final berth with
another silver medal... and I’m going with the home team for bronze on the
thought that a) they might be able to
break through a first-ever podium finish with the support of the French crowd,
and b) Scimeca/Knierim haven’t been as strong yet this season as I was hoping
they’d be. (But with their American in
Paris FS, this would sure be a good time (and place) for them to make a
move up the rankings.
DANCE PREDICTIONS
Gold—
Papadakis/Cizeron (FRA)
Silver—Gilles/Poirier
(CAN)
Bronze—Hubbell/Donohue
(USA
Dark Horse: Paul/Islam
(CAN)
It happens, sometimes... a team withdraws from a competition
not due to injury or illness, but because they feel their programs need so much
tweaking they feel it’s not even worth coming to the starting line. Such as the
case this time around for Cappellini/Lanotte. The reigning World Champs ended
up 3rd behind a relatively new French team two weeks ago, and that
could not possibly have sat well with them. So when faced with the same dance
team—on their home ice, no less—C/L have opted not to show. Will that adversely
affect the competition? Not if you’re okay with a possible repeat of silver and
bronze from Skate Canada.
Look for #TEB14 as the hashtag if you are on Twitter. Things
kick off with the pairs short program at 9:30AM
ET ... bonne chance with
your viewing!
No comments:
Post a Comment