Fresh from winning this year’s Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs by a huge margin, and then earning, in Belarus, the World Junior title for the third time, the Chinese youngsters, Wenjing Sui, 16, & Cong Han, 19, made mincemeat of their opposition in Monday’s Preliminary Round, which opened the World Senior championships, winning the Pairs Preliminary Round by 20.09 points over the host country’s Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.  

It was Sui and Han’s debut in this event. She said, “We were a little nervous because this is the BIG event – our first World Seniors and we wanted to create a good impression. Maybe nerves played a part in my fall (on her triple toe loop which also got an arrow for slight under-rotation). Overall, we didn’t skate so well today. We held back.”

He said, “It was a little hard as this is only our second day here. We had only one training yesterday and competed today. Actually, I think this was a good run-through for us for later in the week.”

Interestingly, the last time this event was in Nice was in 2000, when Sui and Han’s teammates here in Nice, Qing Pang & Jian Tong, made their debut finishing 15^th. Twelve years later, Pang & Tong, who are now both 32, twice world champions in 2006 and 2010, are not the favourites here. They won bronze last year in Moscow.

The event is expected to be a dual between the German defending champions, Aliona Savchenko & Robin Szolkowy and the Russians, Tatiana Volovsozhar & Alexander Smirnov. However, Savchenko is still recovering from an accident on their throw triple Axel, which forced them to withdraw from the European Championships.

The sole purpose of this Preliminary was to throw out three pairs. “Throw out” is the correct term since those skaters had immediately to leave their hotel unless they paid up. The ISU was no longer footing their bill. They weren’t even getting dinner! That affected the the Belarussians, Bakirova & Kamianchuk, the Austrians, Martini & Kiefer, the Bulgarians, Makarova & Kenchadze, who were 9^th, 10^th and 11^th.

The marks for this section are NOT carried forward, but the places the skaters earn do count towards which group they draw in for the slots for the Short Program, which will take place on Wednesday. 

Performing their Marina Zueva created Free, set to Michael Laucke’s The Soul of Flamenco, on the temporary surface installed with 10,000-blue seats, in front of an extremely enthusiastic and vocal crowd in the Exposition Hall on Monday afternoon, they certainly weren’t perfect, but they were clearly the leaders.

Sui and Han, who performed tenth of the 11 pairs, competed at both Junior and Senior levels this season and therefore have two versions of their Free, with the one for seniors which is forty seconds longer and includes an extra element. Today they earned 116.57, considerably below their dazzling score for the Free at the Four Continents Championships of 135.08.

They executed two spectacular triple throws, a Salchow and a flip. Strangely, although they received for the Salchow, seven +2 Grades of Execution and one +3, the results sheet showed one judge giving the lowest possible GoE, -3.

They also presented their quad twist but his catch was somewhat messy. Six judges punched in -1 and one -2 yet two gave 0 meaning they thought it was satisfactory in every aspect.

Apart from the quad twist, which was Level 1, their three lifts, the two spins, a pair combo and a flying change foot, plus the back outside death spiral all received the maximum level of difficulty, 4.

James and Cipres, who performed sixth to Yanni’s Nostalgia, were over-the-moon at placing second. They had a difficult European championship in Sheffield, competing with another French pair for the one place here. James, 24, is multi-national. She was born in Canada, lived in the United States, but because her father has a Bermudan passport, she was able to go to Britain and become that country’s Ladies champion in December 2005, before going to France to do pairs.

She said about her current, second partner, who is four years younger than her, “We teamed up in September 2010 and it was very hard at first because he was a singles skater who had to learn to have a completely different mindset, and I had represented France with a very experienced pair skater. Pair skating is very dangerous and you always have to be thinking about your partner, and Morgan wasn’t used to that. Plus he wasn’t used to a female bossing him around all the time, and that was hard for both of us. He had to learn lifts and death spirals in a very short time.”

James and Cipres had two elements with negative GoEs. They lost unison on their second element, a sequence of triple toe to double toe jumps and she wasn’t able to hold the landing of their throw triple Salchow, late in the program.  She added, “I’m so happy to be here. The audience was amazing. They really got into the spirit of things.”

In third place, scoring 90.68, were the Germans, Mari Vartman, 23, and Aaron van Cleave, 25. She fell on their first throw, the triple loop, and they got no points for their choreo spirals. She explained, “We watched our performance from Europeans about the throw jump, concentrating on its technique. We wanted to skate as well here as we did in Sheffield, which was simply to show our training. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that today.”

The long-time British champions, Stacey Kemp and David King, who are trained by Jeremy Barrett in Florida, were fourth presenting an Irish dance to Far Away. Although she fell on her double Axel, she received credit for the rotation. Their score was 89.30.

For the first time, there was a pair from North Korea, Ji Hyang Ri, 16, and Won Hyok Thae 24, from their capital Pyongyang, who finished sixth, behind Danielle Montalbano & Evgeni Krasnopolski, who represent Israel.