Todd’s Blog

Ellen and I are on a long weekend trip to Lake Placid, NY for this year’s Skate America figure skating competition. We got up early Friday morning and drove up, an eight hour trip, arriving in time to check in to our hotel and walk along Lake Placid’s charming Main Street to the Olympic Center, where the competition takes place, at the 1980 Olympics rink.

Inside, the arena is fairly small, I’d guess it doesn’t seat more than 2000 people. We don’t know how they managed during the 1980 Olympics. Even so, there were plenty of empty seats Friday, maybe more will be filled on the weekend. Our seats were good, nine rows from the ice about halfway between the corner and the center.

The afternoon session was the Ice Dance Compulsory, where each of the ten teams had to perform the exact same routine. In one way it’s kind of boring, but it does give even someone like me, who is no expert, a good comparison of the skills of each team. Americans Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto were clearly the best, and won by a good margin. To be fair, they are the highest ranking team at this event, currently third in the world.

The lighting conditions are good enough for my camera when they’re standing still, but once the skaters start moving, I can only get shots like this.

The afternoon session ended, and we went to an inexpensive but nice pizza/pasta restaurant on Main Street for dinner, then went back for the evening session, which began with the Pairs Short Program competition. Eight pairs are competing, and this is one of them but I’m afraid I’m not sure which.

The big news in Pairs is the return from retirement of Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao of China, who’ve been out of competition for a few years. They were ranked last at this competition, so skated first, but were wonderful, making no mistakes, and thrilling the audience with their throws, lifts and jumps.

Again, my camera couldn’t capture them well in motion, but they received a standing ovation from the audience, and all the teams that came after them seemed disspirited by their performance, including the other Chinese team of Zhang and Zhang. They won the Short Program easily.

Next (and last) was the Men’s Short Program, which was really interesting because it put American Evan Lysacek against current world number one Tomas Verner (from the Czeck Republic). Though I didn’t like his costume, Lysacek put on a brilliant performance to music by Stravinsky. Verner followed with a poor performance, falling on his famous quad jump, and looking unprepared overall. Lysacek won the event, also geting a standing ovation. Verner was near the bottom. The long program tomorrow will be even more interesting.