by Alexandra Stevenson
Coming to the Olympic Games is the dream of most athletes. Back home, these six Ladies achieved what for them was a life’s ambition. All of them were given impressive send-offs, complete with "team gear" and great local publicity. While they all can claim to be Olympians, a cruel fate awaited them in Vancouver. They will return home with heavy hearts, their tails between their legs. Years and years of extremely hard work was found wanting. They return as losers. Unlike the leader after the Short Program, Yu-na Kim, when they needed to produce, they tried their best but came up short, and were unceremoniously booted out, failing to make the top 24 who get to free skate.
Finishing place 25; 46.10 (26.26+19.84) Isabelle Pieman, 26, from Brussels the capital of Belgium, is the first woman figure skater from her country to compete in an Olympics since Katrien Pauwels finished 16th in 1984 and 17th in 1988. "I fought really hard to get to the Olympics," Pieman said. "My coach, Laurent Van den Neucker, who was only 33, died in May 2009, which was just before this season started. We were really good friends and I wanted to skate well to honor his memory." She did not even have the consolation of even being close, although she earned a Personal Best score. The gap between her and the 24th placed skater was a considerable 2.92. Even if she had got a higher level than 1 for her flying sit, she would not have made it. Her combination was only triple toe to double toe and the other triple was a Salchow. But her main misfortune was to draw to skate immediately following the gorgeous showing of the 16-year Mirai Nagasu, the 2008 US champion, who performed well enough for sixth place in this section. Although Pieman had a decent routine set to Charlie Parker’sTake Five and experience from two world championships to draw on, finishing 34th in 2007 and 40th in 2008, she paled in comparison with Nagasu. Her previous skating crisis was having to withdraw from a competition in 2004 in Bratislava because her bag containing her skates was stolen. Pieman had struggled all week in practice. During her performance she did not fall, but she was slow.
26. 43.84 (24.80+20.04 -1.0 for the fall) Miriam Zeigler, 15, was the youngest entrant of the 30 competitors, yet is the twice champion of her country, Austria, which used to be a great powerhouse in this sport. Beatrix Schuba won Olympic gold in 1972 so Zeigler’s efforts pale by comparison. Born on March 19, 1994, she was eligible for this level of competition by three and a half months. Like many skaters, she and her parents have already made many sacrifices for her career. Her mother is a school teacher and her father a rehabilitation therapist. They live in the small village of Stoob. Since they could not afford to make the trip to Vancouver, they had to watch the coverage on television. Zeigler trains in Vienna where she lives in a boarding school. She drew to skate third, performing to Farewell by Apocalyptica in black. She fell on her triple Lutz, which was deemed under-rotated. Since this was originally intended as her combination, she wisely added the double toe to her triple Salchow. But then she also did only an Axel which was also deemed under-rotated and she received no marks at all for this element. She said, "I’m so angry with myself. I did the jumps in training and I did them in the warm-up so I’m not sure what happened. I don’t think it was nerves. I’m not sure what happened. It doesn’t feel like I’m the youngest because I know most of the other skaters and some of them know me." She did not approach her Personal Best of 45.34 set in 2007 at a competition in Vienna.
27. 43.80 (23.80+20.00) Teodora Postic, 25, who lives in Zirovnica, Slovenia, in the north bordering on Austria, thought her career in skating was over in 2002 when she had four surgeries on her right ankle and went through seven months of rehabilitation. Though she is the three-time national champion, this is her first Olympics and she did not reach her personal best, set in the recent European Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, where she finished 19th. She said, "I don’t know what happened. I stepped out of my triple loop, which was deemed under-rotated but my combination was good (but only triple Salchow to double toe). My spirals were short. My practices were good. It just didn’t work out." Skating in a sleeveless light blue creation, she under-rotated her first jump a triple loop, so she improvised and added a double toe loop to her triple Salchow. She performed to Pierre Porte’s Coeur a Cordes, which was described by the official Axel Radio commenter as "basic elevator music," who also decried her weak spins.
28. 41.94 (22.66+19.28) Ivana Reitmayero, 17, Slovakia, Bratislava, comes from a sporting-oriented family. Her grandfather, Jindrich Reitmayer represented Slovakia and the Czech Republic in ice hockey, while her father, Peter, represented Czechoslovakia in alpine skiing. Her brother, Peter is an international junior figure skater. She is coached by her mother. She drew to skate second. Performing in black to The Memories of a Lover, she did a satisfactory combination of triple toe to double toe. However, she received only one point for her double Axel because, although she completed the rotation, she landed messily and was forced to put both hands on the ice to keep from falling. Though she doubled her Salchow, she received Level 4s, the maximum, for two of her spins and the spirals. She came no where near her personal best, which she gained in the last world championships where she finished 14th. she said, "I am trying to forget everything that happened today."
29. 40.64 (20.08+21.56 -1.0) Jenna McCorkell, the record seven-time British champion, was devastated, coming off the ice not only in tears but shaking, which she was still doing for a considerable time after getting off the ice. In her first appearance at the Olympics, she skated tenth in black to Dance of Death which has previously been used by Irina Slutskaya. McCorkell, 23, was 20th in the last world championship. She is not petite and is known for her powerful jumps. But when they go wrong, she slams into the ice with enormous momentum. Born in Coleraine, in Northern Ireland, she left home for Coventy in the center of England where she trained until she married last year, mens competitor Kevin van der Perren. They reside in his home country of Belgium. McCorkell began with a good double Axel but then fell heavily on her triple Lutz, which was downgraded. This was meant to be combined with a double toe loop. Instead of 7.30, which is the base value of that move, she received only 0.90 for this. Shocked by this major error, she doubled her intended triple flip jump. With her voice breaking, and shaking her head, she said, "I'm devastated. That was the worst skate I've done for the last four years. I'm just devastated. There's no other word. I can't change it. I wish I could. I mean, I've had a great experience here, but I'm just so mad at what I did tonight. I have no idea of what went wrong. I felt good in the warm-up. I had a long wait after the warm-up), so I had too much time to think. I won't make it through. I'm not sure what happened. At the European Championship (in January) I felt awful. I had been sick for a month but I still went out there and got a personal best. I had 14 points more there than I did tonight. It will take some time to get over this."
30. 36.10 (16.78+19.32) Anna Jurkiewicz, Poland, whose grandfather was a prisoner in the notorious Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, started skating 20 years ago, when was 6. She promised she would not finish skating until she got to the Olympics and landed a triple Axel. She was fifth in World Juniors more than a decade ago, and although she has now fulfilled her dream of going to the Olympics, it turned out to be a traumatic experience. Skating to the gypsy music Dark Eyes, she messed up all three jumping passes, singling her flip and Axel and doubling the toe loop meant to be a triple in combination. Although she earned three Level 4s, plus a 3 for her layback and a 2 for the straight line steps, she finished the Short Program last by a large 4.54 points. She said, "In practice my jumps were good but when I went onto the ice, I had a meltdown. I was shocked. My double, my combination, I always do them – always." But not this time. Jamie McGrigor, speaking on the in-house radio network called Axel Radio, which allows spectators to buy a headset through which they can hear expert commentary, noted, "She is blowing kisses to the crowd (not realizing how bad her marks would be) while her coach is sitting there trying to keep from putting his hands around her throat."