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Laurie's Review of the Long Programs

Intepretive free skates - pairs:

Berezhnaya & Sikharulidze: Wearing a royal blue shirt, beige or yellow tie for him, and a sparkly blue dress for her, they skated to their familiar and fun Santana medley from COI last season. The SBS double axels were very fine. There was a great spin position where Elena holds her foot and in a split position while Anton spins her around. There was a nice lift with a backflip dismount. But Elena took a bad fall on a throw triple sal, fell forward, and may have smacked her chin. Anton basically rallied for both of them, and skated this program with as much attitude as he could muster. Elena looked scared and seemed to just want to get off the ice.

Tech marks:
5.7 5.6 5.7 5.7 5.7
Presentation
5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8

Tech marks:
5.6 5.7 5.7 5.6 5.6
Presentation:
5.7 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.7

Tech marks:
5.7 5.6 5.6 5.7 5.7
Presentation:
5.6 5.6 5.6 5.5 5.6

Todd Eldredge: Skating to his excellent long program from last year, "The 13th Warrior," Todd wore last year's costume as well. He started with a quad toe (we thought it might have been two-footed because of the ice spray, but Tracy Wilson told us later it was good). Then he followed this with a triple axel/double toe combination, followed by a triple lutz and then another triple axel. Great and superb spins, lovely camel spins, Russian splits. Very good presentation. Rock solid. Tech marks: 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 Presentation: 5.9 5.8 5.9 5.8 5.7

Todd lands his first quad jump in competition! Alexei congratulated Todd backstage on his first quad before Alexei skated his own long program. How sweet! Photo taken by Dianna Nowain

Steven Cousins: Wearing his multi-colored purple, green, and orange print shirt with black pants, Steven performed his SOI program from last year. He stepped out of his triple lutz. He did a backwards somersault on the ice, not a backflip. Crowd liked the sass in the program, but it was weak on tech difficulty, of course.

Tech marks:
5.6 5.5 5.6 5.5 (missing one)
Presentation:
5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.6

Alexei Yagudin: Skating to the "Gladiator" soundtrack, and carrying a prop knife in each hand which he never put down, he wore a different "Gladiator" costume than the one he debuted in Sun Valley. (To see what it looked like, click here! )This one could best be described as more conservative, if any gladiator-type costume could ever be described as conservative, LOL... This one has a short maroon cape on one shoulder, black on one side of his shirt/gold and silver on the other, black pants.

He started with what we thought was a triple toe intended to be a quad toe, but perhaps it was a triple flip, as he performed a triple toe later in the program. He followed this with a triple axel he stepped out of, followed by a triple loop and triple toe. Nice spread eagle. Great butterflies. Lots of drama in the program, including dying on ice. Footwork was very good and difficult. Pancake and scratch spins were nice. There was an interesting slide move. I've seen this program skated with more passion, and I missed all the extra butterflies and dance leaps from the Sun Valley version, but it was very good.

Photos taken by Dianna Nowain

Tech marks:
5.8 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.7
Presentation:
5.8 5.8 5.9 5.9 5.7

Tech marks:
5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7
Presentation:
5.7 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.7

Tech marks:
5.5 5.5 5.4 5.6 5.5
Presentation:
5.5 5.5 5.5 5.6 5.7

Tech marks:
5.8 5.8 5.8 5.9 5.8 (not sure of these)
Presentation:
5.8 5.9 5.8 5.8(?) 5.8

Tech marks:
5.8 5.8 5.8 5.9 5.8
Presentation
5.9 5.8 6.0 5.9 5.9

Tech marks:
5.6 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.7
Presentation:
5.7 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.9