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The Exhibitions - Gladiator
Luckily, he did skate and the audience gave him more than the benefit of the doubt. To our relief they gave him a very warm welcome when he was introduced. He skated over and took his position on the ice for Gladiator and waited for the music to start. And waited, and waited, and waited.... Finally he sneaked a peek up and the audience laughed. Back into position he went and waited, and waited again. The announcer told him there was a problem with the music and that's when he pretended to stab himself and fell over on the ice. This time the audience roared. The music finally did start but it was the wrong version (FS instead of exhibition). Alexei tried to jump up and start with it but obviously didn't want to be skating the competitive version AGAIN. The music was stopped yet again and this time he seemed resigned to skate to ANY version. Thinking it would be the FS music he stood this time but when the music started he realized it was indeed the exhibition version so he had to hurriedly get back down on the ice which caused the audience to laugh again as he hurriedly did the beginning moves to catch up with the music. When he was finally able to get into the program it was wonderful. Skated much the same way and with much the same intensity we saw in Sun Valley. At the end all of us stood up at once and the rest of the audience soon followed. I was so glad he got that standing ovation. That and the levity at the beginning seemed to help him. I hope having the banner there helped too (in all the excitement I had forgotten to mention it, Julie,----sorry). LOL, at the medal ceremonies, they didn't play an anthem at first, it sounded like a snippet of regular music. Everyone laughed when it happened and the announcer said, "Just wanted to see if you were paying attention".
Kim
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