Sochi Olympics: Even more Team Event SP

Advantage Davis and White. Experts say this is a stunning position.

Time is decidedly flying. Straight from the live stream to the rink, straight from the rink to SFT headquarters. Eat, sleep, rinse and repeat. After just those two days of Olympic skating, I feel the most inspired in a long time, and I was thusly compelled to indulge in both active and passive skating. As this portion of the event is practically old news by the time I'll have finished this post, I won't dwell too long on what transpired today.

I vaguely remember it all started with the short dance. The questions here were who of V/M or D/W would place first and if France with P/B could manage to sneak into 3rd, pushing the Russians with B/S to 4th.

All of you who follow the media and the message boards will have heard that apparently the fix is in. It's always nice, when unnamed sources come forward with information that is all too happily taken up by various media outlets, and fleshed out with all sorts of suggestive and biased information, and a veritable list of why V/M are just superior in any way. Read all about it here, and make of it what you will, preferably nothing. I'm not even a Davis & White fan, I prefer V/M, but good journalism looks different, a lot more different.

Anyway, D/W actually did beat V/M in the short dance. You be the judge whether it was due to the alleged fix, Tessa Virtue's tiny twizzle bobble (V/M lost more than 2 points to D/W on that element.), or something else entirely.

Poised for 2 Olympic medals?

On to more important things, now. The question whether France was gonna make the Team finals and how Pechalat & Bourzat would compare to Bobrova & Soloviev. The answer to both questions wasn't really joy inducing. P/B even won slightly in TES, but, alas, it was to no avail, they lost almost one and a half points in the PCS department to place 4th. Both teams hadn't been to the European Championships, btw.

I'm still somewhat miffled about how P/B were stuck in ice dance limbo 5 years ago, when Delobel & Schoenfelder took a more than one year hiatus, during which P/B couldn't move up in the dance hierarchy (due to D/S looming in the background as French No1) and both teams taking major PCS hits for it in Vancouver. Now, fast forward to the present and it seems that the Olympic bronze that had gotten within their reach over the last couple years, is gradually slipping away from them again. Sigh, they gave us Circus.

Meanwhile, this year's Euro champs Cappellini & Lanotte placed a rather distant 5th, after losing levels on their steps and dance patterns. I enjoy watching those two quite a bit, and they are very likeable, though their programs are not groundbreakingly original, or daring out-of-the-box performances.

63.10???

Then, there was the Ladies short. Kostner and Lipnitskaya were clean. Lipnitskaya got showered with PCS and won deservedly. Mao Asada came 3rd, after losing huge points on a downgraded 3 Axel, which she did lots of good ones in the practices. Ashley Wagner skated and received an underrotation, and also relatively modest scores.

Ok, so all the skaters of all the teams skated. Japan (30 points) and Italy (31 points) made it to the finals, together with the three skating powerhouses Canada (41 points), Russia (47 points), and the US (34 points).

Then came the Pairs Free, but let's put that into the next post with all the other disciplines. Barring epic surprises by the dozen, the podium will pretty much mirror the current points standings.