2010 Skate Canada

Kingston, ON

Competition Reports

Ladies Report     Men's Report    Pairs Report    Dance Report

Competition Schedule

Overview

Sunday, October 31

No sooner has one caught one's breath and settled in to the locale, slam bam thank you ma'am its over.  The dance final was in and out in little over an hour.  Sinead and John Kerr, placed third in the Free Dance due largely to a collapsed lift and dropped to second overall.  They were passed up in the Free dance by the Canadian teams of Vanessa Crone & Paul Poirier and Alexandra Paul & Mitchell Islam, who placed one-two.  Americans Madison Chock & Greg Zuerlein placed fourth in the Free Dance, but were still able to squeak past Paul & Islam to win the bronze medal by a margin of 0.89 points over the Canadians.

Following the awards ceremony for dance, Ann Shaw was inducted into the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame.  Shaw, a long time chairman of the ISU Dance Technical Committee, was honored for her contributions to Canadian ice dancing and accomplishments within the ISU.  Shaw was instrumental in the adapting the concepts of IJS to the dance event and is largely responsible for the renaissance of Ice Dance in recent years.

The closing exhibition featuring the top four finishers from each event (less the fourth place pair) closed out the day, with an estimated attendance of 3400 for the dance and exhibition.

Saturday, October 30

All three events today saw major changes that scrambled the results.  The day opened with the Pairs event where Iliuchechkina & Maisuradze held on to win the gold medal, despite a second place result in the Free Skate.  Kirsten Moore-Towers & Dylan Moscovitch, who were fifth in the Short Program, won the Free Skate and moved into second overall for the bronze medal.  In one of the oddities of IJS, Meagen Duhamel & Eric Radford placed fourth in both the short and the long, yet placed fifth overall.

In the Men's event, Patrick Chan moved up three places to take the gold medal with a strong performance that included his first quad landed in competition, that was high and light and received eight 2s and one 3 for GoEs. Adam Rippon placed second in the free skate to place third overall, while Nobunari Oda, dropped to second overall with a third best performance in the Free Skate.  Kevin Reynolds, who had placed second in the Short Program, dropped to sixth in the Free Skate to finish fourth overall.

Alissa Czisny pulled together a stunning performance to win the Free Skate after placing fourth in the Short Program and rocketed to first place overall.  Ksenia Makarova held second in the Free Skate to finish second overall, while Amelie Lacoste placed fourth in the Free Skate, which was enough to move up to third overall for the bronze medal.  Cynthia Phaneuf choked her way through the Free Skate, dropping to seventh in the Free Skate to finish fourth overall. 

Unofficial attendance:  Afternoon, 3600;  Evening 3600.

Friday, October 29

The retirement and semi-retirement of skaters from the last Olympic cycle opens the door this season to a new crop of skaters working towards the 2014 Olympics.  About a third of the entries are appearing  in their first Senior Grand Prix, with skaters from the U.S. such as Hockstein, Zawadzki, and Tibbetts & Brubaker. Also back this season are some long in the tooth skaters who soldier on despite skills that stalled out years ago or are slowly eroding, such as Czisny and Suguri,  Finally, rounding out the entries are skaters who have bubbled up near the top in the last Olympic cycle and are embarking on the second phase of their quest for Olympic glory. such as Chan and Rippon.

Speaking of Chan, the hype was in overdrive at the start of the week, thanks to a newly acquired quad that if executed consistently in competition could finally push him to the top.  In the Short Program, however, he crashed three time (two jumps and footwork) but did not quite burn due to his uncanny ability to make major errors in competition and still hold on to a performance so it does not become a total disaster.

Use of the new Short Dance -- the newest creation from the South Park Genetics Ranch -- is the first appearance of the dance in a major ISU event in North America.  There seems to be two approaches taken by the skaters in developing the Short Dance.  For some it is an Original Dance with the two sections of the Golden Waltz dropped in as two step sequences, while for others the Short Dance is a pattern dance fleshed out with twizzles and a lift.  Of these, the second approach generally proved more effective as a coherent dance.  Kerr & Kerr took a slightly different approach creating a dance in three sections, with three distinct styles and the Golden Waltz one of these sections (the first).

Unofficial attendance:  Morning-Afternoon, 2500;  Evening 3000.

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