As expected, the Russian world champions, Tatiana Totmianina & Maxim Marinin, took the lead showing off their beautiful new Ave Maria short.

They floated through the first six of their eight required elements - Level 1back inside death spiral, Level 2 spiral sequence, superb throw triple loop which gained plus two from seven of the eleven judges (four gave them only plus one), excellent solo triple toe loops, low double twist, and secure Group 5 lasso lift.

But they were completely off on their side by side combination spin. Marinin did not fulfilled the requirement number of revolutions. Two judges gave minus three, seven minus two and two generous feeling officials punched in minus one. They recovered, as experienced competitors do, to present their final element, the pair combination spin.

Again, as experienced competitors, they sloughed off the mistake in the subsequent press conference. The 22 year old Totmianina, who was born in Perm, said, "The start of the program was good. We made a small mistake. It’s the first time we’ve performed this program, so, for a start, it was okay."

Her 27 year old partner, who was born in Volgograd, said, "I’ve had problems on the triple toe and I was concerned about that, so I lost concentration."

The Russians teamed together in St. Petersburg where they trained until early 2001 when they moved to Chicago to be coached by Oleg Vasiliev.

They are three times European but only twice Russian champions.

In the past their choreography has been made by Guiseppi Arena, and the skaters have been criticized for being too "cold" as performers. "He is a great guy," said Vasiliev, "But he doesn’t skate." This summer, we worked with (Canadian) Lori Nichol and it’s been great for Tatiana.

"Lori was a skater so she gets on the ice and shows Tatiana what to do and that’s helped her show more expression. The long is to Scherezade. It’s funny. When we got together with Lori, she asked what I thought they should skate to and we both made a list. We both came up with this music as our first choice."

Second were Julia Obertas and Sergei Slavnov, also representing Russia. Twenty year old Obertas was born in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk (where Oksana Baiul also first saw the light of day). The blonde Obertas competed for Ukraine until 2000 when she suffered a bad accident in the world championships with her former partner.

She moved to St. Petersburg and in 2003 began skating with Slavnov who is 22 and was born in this northern city with its showplace Hermitage music and Kirov ballet. They are currently ranked third in their country and were seventh in the recent world championships.

"After a year, we feel better as a pair," said Obertas.

They are trained by Tamara Moskvina, who has now settled back in her hometown after living for several years in Hackensack, New Jersey. "They are working to bring the programs to a higher level of difficulty, working within the requirements of the new system, while still keeping trademark elements I had with the other couples – keeping those traditions and innovative elements."

Seven of their elements were fine but they had trouble while in their lift. Moskvina explained, "She was changing position to straight upside down above him. She’s supposed to go straight up into that position but she went into an intermediate crouch position. But she got there."

Gaining third place were Dan Zhang & Hao Zhang, who drew to skate first. In somber black outfits with just a shimmer of silver, they performed to Blues music - All Alone by Joe Satriani. As ever they had a superbly high lateral double twist for which four judges awarded plus two.

Their lift was also good but she had a less than stellar exit from her triple toe resulting in six minus ones. But to show there is still room for "disagreement", four judges gave them zero which means the move was adequately performed and one thought it was better than that and presented a plus one. (Unfortunately, we can no long point the finger and be sure who that errant thinker is.)

As usual with Chinese pairs, their spinning was their weakest area. The newly turned 19 year old Dan Zhang and her 20 year old partner are not related despite their same last name (which is very common in China). The pair, who was fifth in the last world championship up from sixth the year before and ninth in their debut in 2002, were both born in Harbin, the birthplace of Chinese pair skating, but now train in the superior facilities in Beijing with Bin Yao.

Hao Zhang admitted, "We didn't feel it was up to our normal standard."

Ecstatic about their splendid showing were the US champions, Rena Inoue and John Baldwin, Jr., who gave the best performance I have ever witnessed from them to slide into fourth place, only 0.46 points behind the Chinese.

Even Baldwin’s struggle to hold the landing on their first move, side-by-side triple Lutzes, in which his body jackknifed forward but he held onto the edge while doing a very steep edge, did not significantly mar their presentation.

All but two of the other pairs did the far easier triple toes for the required side-by-side jumps while the Canadians, Elizabeth Putnam & Sean Wirtz did triple Salchows and the last placed Israelis, Julia Shapiro &Vadim Akolin, were content to do double Axels.

Baldwin said, "It was nice for the first time out. I bobbled the triple Lutz but otherwise it was clean. We want to place at this event and I think we have a good chance to do it."

Their music was Bird of Fire played by the Salsoul orchestra. Baldwin, who turned 31 three days before the short, has been on the US National team since 1986. But his foray into pairs only began when he teamed up with Inoue for the 2001 season.

Inoue was 28 four days before the short. She was born in Nishinomiya, a satellite city near Kobe and Osaka, and represented Japan twice in the Olympic Games, in 1992 in pairs and in 1994 in singles.

They teamed up for the 2001 season and won the US championship in 2004 in their fourth try. The pair, who is coached by Jill Watson, a bronze medalist in pairs from the 1988 Olympics, have been tenth in the last two world championships.

Jennifer Don, who recently turned 20, & Jonathan Hunt, 23, drew to skate last. They made no major error though they did receive minor minuses on their lift and back inside death spiral from a minority of the judges.

Skating in dark navy, the pair, who has competed together since 2002 and finished fourth in the 2004 US nationals, used the well loved Piano Concerto No 2 by Sergei Rachmaninov to gain fifth place, 5.52 points behind their teammates.

Artur Dmitriev, the Russian Olympic champion who recently began training Inoue & Baldwin in Hackensack, was extremely pleased. "I didn't expect to see them skate that way tonight. They've been skating at about 70 percent of what they can do, and tonight I thought they skated at 80 percent. It is a good base, but we need to add more difficulty."

Skating second, immediately following their teammates, were Yang Ding, 20, & Zhongfei Ren, 22, who competed in the world junior championships four times, finally winning silver in 2003.

Performing to Prelude Rondo Capriccioso by Sheng Sang, they received small minuses on five of their eight elements, including the twist. However their first move, the throw triple loop was great.

They are coached by Luan Bo in Harbin. Bo is Bin Yao’s partner. They were the first Chinese pair to take part in a world championship, which they did in 1980. Although they finished last, they have been responsible for devising the training scheme in their own country which has producing today’s extremely successful generation of Chinese pairs.

Putnam & Wirtz, who have ranked third in the past two Canadian championships, took seventh place. The 19 and 24 year olds made a recent move to Hackensack to train with Dmitriev. "He took us back to basics and we’re completely reworking out technique," said Wirtz. "We went right back to the start and began working on single flips."

Katie Orscher & Garrett Lucash, who are trained by former Russian world champion, Vadim Naumov, have been the runner-up pair in US nationals for the past two years (to two different teams).

They struggled to their music Still Got the Blues by Gary Moore. Their double twist was okay but Lucash fell on their second move, side-by-side triple toes. That meant that not only did they receive minus threes, they also got a deduction of minus 1.0 for the fall.

Then Orscher stepped out of their throw triple flip. In all they had minus scores for five of their elements. Lucash, who is 26, and Orscher, 20, were at a loss to explain their problems.

"There were no questions about our confidence," said Lucash. "We’re not going to do anything differently in preparing for the free skate. We felt good, so we're going to keep doing what we're doing."

Missing from the competition were former world champions, Maria Petrova & Alexei Tikhonov. Apparently she incurred an injury in the summer and they were not able to take part in a screening given by the Russian Association, which declined to give them the go-ahead to travel to Pittsburgh.