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2016 Skate Canada Ladies

by Klaus Reinhold Kany


 

 

 

 

(30 October 2016) The ladies competition was the first one at Skate Canada International 2016 in Mississauga, Ontario to finish. Several skaters of world class competed, so it had a very good level. Especially in the free program, nobody had a bad day and everybody made few mistakes if any at all.

Reigning World Champions Evgenia Medvedeva from Russia won with 220.65 points, which came near her personal best of 223 points from the World Championships in Boston. She had broken her boots after Japan Open, but said she felt well in her new boots which she has been wearing only for about ten days. And she has a cold but this did not prevent from skating excellently again.

Medvedeva took the lead in the short program with a personal best of 76.24 points, skating to "River Flows in You" by Lorenzo di Luca and "The Winter" by Balmorhea. With her slim body the 16-year-old student of Eteri Tutberidze glided on the ice and jumped like a feather and each element looked very easy. GOEs of +2 dominated for each of her elements, including a triple flip – triple toe loop combination. The layback spin at the end even got six times GOEs of +3. Her components were around 8.9, with some 9.5 as highest ones from the judge fro Uzbekistan.

She commented: "My short program relates to my current situation, because it’s about growing up, becoming an adult. Not so much physically, but about your inner world changing when you grow up. My performance was really good, but I can have more speed in my spins and I can interpret my program better."

The music of her free program is the sound track "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" which was written by French composer Alexandre Desplat after the 9-11 events. She explained the story of her program: "The story is about terrorism in general. I am a young woman who closes the door behind somebody I love (it my be a husband, father or daughter or anybody I love) and see that I have forgotten to give this person his or her lunch package. I think I will give it to him the next time. Later I hear that something terrible has happened. At the end the telephone rings and I learn that my beloved person is at the place where the terrible thing happened and he will never come back."

Again everything looked easy. She began with an excellent combination of triple flip and triple toe loop, followed by a good triple Lutz, four more triple jumps and two double axels, the second of which was a bit under-rotated. The spins were outstanding again Her components had an average level of 8.9. "My performance was not good today", she said, "because I made minor mistakes on my two last jumps. "But I'm happy because I am first today."

Kaetlyn Osmond from Edmonton, Alberta, who had beaten the 2015 world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva at the Finlandia Trophy three weeks ago, was second with 206.45 points. In her short program, she gave an excellent performance with a huge combination of triple flip and triple toe loop (which got three GOEs of +3 and six of +2) and a very good triple Lutz. Her jumps are as high as men’s jumps. She interpreted two famous French chansons by Edith Piaf: "Sous le ciel de Paris" (Under the Skies of Paris) and "Milord" in a sparkling style and had components with an average of 8.3.

She said: "I wish I had been to Paris, because then I would know how it actually feels to walk through the streets of Paris. I love playing the character of just being a confident female. Overall, I am super healthy, and it's the longest I've ever been healthy, It’s been a long time coming to be able to do a program like that and finally to get a personal best score. But I‘ve got to stay calm."

She began her free program (with music by Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Boheme) with the same outstanding flip and toe loop combination, followed by three other high triple jumps, but fell on the triple loop. Her three level 4 spins were excellent as well and her components around 8.5.

Satoko Mayahara from Japan won the bronze medal, earning 192.08 points. In the combination of the short program, the triple toe loop after the triple Lutz was under-rotated and the triple flip got an edge call. The other elements were excellent, the layback spin even outstanding. In her free program, she excelled by an elegant style. Five triple jumps were more or less clean, but two under-rotated and she got no points for the step sequence because it was too short and did not cover the whole ice surface. "It was not my best", she said, "but I skated with a strong emotions. In practice, my jumps are better, but when I get nervous, my jumps get worse."

The 2015 World Champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva from Russia finished fourth with 187.99 points. In the clean short program, she landed an excellent triple toe-triple toe combination and a triple Lutz in her program to a modern version of "Piano Concerto No. 23” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But she did not try the triple axel because it is not stable at the moment. In the free program to the soundtrack of "Cleopatra", five triple jumps were clean, but she singled the axel and could not add a second jump after her triple toe loop which was planned as a combination. Her choreography was not as fluent as the programs in the years before and her components were only around 7.6.

Alain Chartrand from Toronto finished fifth, winning 185.56 points. Six of her elements in the short program were relatively clean, but she landed the triple toe loop after the triple Lutz on the wrong foot. In the free program, this same combination and two other triple jumps were very good, but she had an edge call on the triple flip and stepped out of the second triple Lutz.

Rika Hongo from Japan finished on sixth position with 171.19 points. The two South Korean skaters Dabin Choi and Nahyun Kim ended up seventh and eighth.

Mirai Nagasu of Colorado Springs finished on a disappointing ninth place, earning 151.42 points, after being very good in practice and at the Autumn Classic in Montreal a month ago. In the short program, she fell on the triple flip, could not add a second jump and stepped also out of the triple loop. The other elements were good. "As soon as the music came, I wasn’t myself any more", she commented. In the long program, she did not fall, but no less than of her jumps were under-rotated or downgraded. Therefore she was eleventh and last in the free program, in spite of a dynamic style.

Joshi Helgesson from Sweden and Yuka Nagai from Japan finished tenth and eleventh, but even they performed an almost clean free program.