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Saturday, the 29th: Ladies LP

On Saturday we slept long, bought our train ticket to Milano for Monday, had breakfast (sweet of course) and only got to the rink in time for the Ladies LP, I don’t think we saw any practices beforehand.

Candice Didier opened the LP, I think she landed 3 triples (flip, salchow, toeloop), but she screwed up most jumps in the middle. She also screwed up a spin entry and seemed shaky overall in her skate. She has a nice lyrical style, but overall gives an too chaotic impression.

Tugba Karademir had a good skate, except for the first jump and another double. Again she had good spins and spirals. Sometimes her jumps didn’t have much of a run-out.

Bianca Padar skated to the Addams Family soundtrack. Again we admired her porny coach (too bad he’s not coaching more skaters :P ) and Nora. Bianca landed 2 triples, but unfortunately also had 3 hard falls. She looked slow and labored tonight and her SP performance had definitely been much better.

Karen Venhuizen skated to Gladiator, but luckily it were very un-bombastic parts of the soundtrack. She finished a bit behind the music, but had a very good skate overall, I think she did pretty much everything she tried, even if she doesn’t try the difficult triples and some of her jumps are not fully rotated. Definitely a good competition for her.

Sonja Radeva had 2 falls and 2 doubles, but she also landed some good triples at the beginning and skated with good speed. Again I enjoyed her style and program.

Andrea Kreuzer only managed 1 triple and screwed up everything else, there were a lot of falls. It’s really a pity, I like her mostly because of her nice music choices (the LP was Bohemian Rhapsody from Queen) and her good speed and flow.

Sarah Meier had one or two mistakes, but overall she skated very well. She is still using the Evita LP and I was a bit unconcentrated during her skate.

After already skating well in the SP, Idora Hegel had another very good skate in her LP to Doan Juan de Marco (somehow she always skates extremely well when Stefka and I are watching her live). She had a touch down on the 3flip and some jump landings were a bit iffy, but it was a great performance and a great result for her.

Diana Poth was wearing another neon-colored bikini-type costume and after the SP music experience we were speculating what she might be skating to this time, Swan Lake or maybe Liebestraum? :P But it turned out this time the costume made sense, since she had a dancy Latin program. She started out well with 3t-3t, but afterwards everything went wrong: 2z,2f, 3l fall, 2z, 2s, 1a. It could have been an interesting program, but she landed so little. The audience boo’ed her marks loudly, which we didn’t get at all, I mean even if people could not distinguish the triples, it shouldn’t be too hard to notice that she doubled nearly everything.

Lina Johansson unfortunately also had a very bad skate, she fell on 3 jumps, stepped out and nearly fell on another jump and even fell on a spin. Not sure she managed any really clean triple.

Roxana Luca skated to some music from Enigma. She didn’t try any harder triples than the 3loop in this competition and only did 2f-2t, but she landed every triple that she attempted and skated up to her full potential, I thought it was great to watch. She was one of the few clean skaters over the whole course of the ladies competition, again she was very happy after her skate and she was probably one of the ladies I enjoyed the most this week, especially because everything went so well :) . She always tends to have a very concentrated look on her face and needs to improve her speed though. The audience booed her marks loudly again, but of course she got very good marks for her jumping and skating standard and she seemed happy enough with her marks and placement in the K&C. Her coach even indicated that her marks were good in the K&C and tried to calm the audience, LOL.

Jenna McCorkell had some troubles with a triple in the beginning and fell on the loop (?) and later doubled the salchow. Apart from that it was not a bad skate to Swan Lake, but I was kind of zoned out.

Kiira Korpi only did a 1z-2t and stepped out of the 3f. Then she did a 3loop, a nice 3toeloop and confusingly another 3loop next. It did not seem to me that either of her loops was in sequence or a combination, but I suppose one of them should have been or it would make no sense at all. Her spiral was a bit wobbly and she only did a 2s at the end. She wasn’t that good in the LP, but I still enjoyed her a lot, a very nice and talented skater.

Carolina Kostner did a 3f-3t successfully, but fell on the lutz. She continued with 3loop, 2axel, 3salchow, 3toeloop step out, 2f (that I’m sure was intentional). Her competitive skates, especially the LP’s are usually unfortunately not too entertaining to watch, because she just always seems too much as if she just wants to get it over with and never can relax during competition and present her programs to the max. It’s too bad, because sometimes in exhibitions and in a few SP’s, she IMO is one of the most spectacular and beautiful skaters in the World. Of course in comparison to what was still to come from the other top skaters, her LP performance was absolutely not bad at all :P

Daria Timoshenko was pretty much clean, except for one double jump IIRC. She had rather good spins, but was a bit slow. I think this definitely must have been one of her best competitions in her career, at least one of the best competitions I remember seeing of her.

Anette Dytrt skated to “Spartacus”, unfortunately not a good performance. Her jumps: 3z step out, 3s bit shaky, 3f nearly fall, 3s (2footed badly) into 2t, 3t, 2s, 1a. So she did not even land her traditional 3 triples this time, too bad she never skates really well, since she has so much talent and such interesting programs. Again she had a very energetic step sequence. One thing I really like about her is that even if she skates badly in regards to the jumps, she always still keeps tiffin it and performs her program well, so she is always entertaining to watch.

Elina Kettunen had a good beginning in her ABBA medley (unfortunately Richard Claydermann’s version for elevators :P ) program, but did too many doubles later on. Her jumps: 3z-2t-2l, 3f, 2l, 2f, 3t, 2a, 2s-2t. She seemed to run out of steam a bit at the end.

Fleur Maxwell only did the easier triples and some (intended) doubles, but she had a lovely program and presentation and good spins, with some crazy flexible positions. She was another prove that you can get good results without having the most difficult jumps, if you make up for it with other elements :) (even if the audience in Torino unsurprisingly booed her good marks too :P ) I already had liked her from the clips from some JGP earlier in the season, but live she was even nicer to watch. She definitely was one of the highlights of this ladies LP.

Susanna Pöykiö did a 1a and 2z at the end of her program, the rest of her skate was very good. She is basically lovely to watch, but watching her skate live always makes me wish someone would *kickass* her to add some oomph and power into her skating and for someone with such good stroking, she still manages to be remarkably slow. Also I would like to see some improvements to her weaker areas eventually, her spins are quite slow and sometimes her spirals are a bit wobbly. Anyway, she was good, but somehow seeing her live never has much of a positive effect on my opinion about her, LOL , I think she is a skater who seems better on tv, because live her weaknesses are highlighted.

Elena Liashenko stood up on all her triples, but most of her jump landings seemed either iffy or 2footed or iffy and 2footed. Still not a bad skate for her.

Elena Sokolova stepped out of the second 3z and doubled something else, otherwise it was a rather good and powerful skate for her.

Irina Slutskaya popped the salchow, did only a 2l and fell on a triple, but the triples she did land were still impressive and I remember a fast and fluent straightline step sequence and good spins.

I was starting to feel too frustrated about everybody in the last group skating badly (even though I guess some of the skates were not THAT bad, but you just expect a bit more from the last group than from the others and if nobody skates really well, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and I was feeling too *blah* to take any more notes, but I remember that Maniashenko also had a mistake or two, it was not a bad skate for her standards and definitely a good overall competition for her. I remember that I found her about the most interesting about the last group, but I think it was mostly because she was the only ones who’s program I had not seen at all yet. One thing that bugs me a bit about her is that she always manages to gives the impression that she doesn’t care at all about skating while she’s skating, but this might be a wrong impression.

Julia Sebestyen sadly was quite disastrous.

Steffi and I were discussing afterwards if this was the worst ladies LP we’ve ever seen live, but we both agreed that Bofrost 2002 was worse to watch :P We couldn’t quite decide if this was worse or better than the LP in Lausanne 02, but either way, it definitely made the Top 3 :P We also don't quite understand why anyone would wuzrob about a competition where nobody skated well anyway, but then I guess what would people do with nothing to wuzrob about :P