It Ain't Over Until It's Over

Used to be a time — and not that long ago — when it was easy to separate the contenders from the pretenders heading into a free skate.
It was this simple: Top three, have at it for the medals.
The rest of you ... well, thanks for coming out.
Not anymore.
The men’s and women’s finals at the Four Continents Championship offered the latest evidence that — as that old saying goes — it ain’t over until it’s over.
Start with the men’s free skate on Friday night. Evan Lysacek of the U.S. found himself in fourth place after the short program, 10.68 points behind leader Jeffrey Buttle of Canada. But Lysacek skated the lights out in the free skate final in Colorado Springs (most notably, landing a quad, even if it wasn’t the cleanest landing) and wound up on top of the podium when all was said and done.
Final scores: Lysacek, 226.27; Buttle, 223.96.
(the three-time Canadian champ, it should be noted, went quadless and botched a triple Axel).
His training buddy, Christopher Mabee, had the third-best free skate and jumped up five spots to finish fifth.
Fast forward to today and the women’s free skate final. No surprise seeing that reigning world champion Kimmie Meissner won the gold. But the American teen had to rally from a sixth-place finish in the short program.
Granted, Meissner was only 4.11 points in arrears of short program winner Joannie Rochette of Canada. But this is the kind of leap that would have been virtually impossible under the old 6.0-based system.
With a 172.75-point overall total, though, Meissner had more than enough to slide past American compatriot Emily Hughes (166.60) and Rochette (165.90).
Worth noting: Had Rochette been able to match her ISU personal best free skate score of 118.26 (recorded at Skate Canada in Victoria), the gold would have been hers.
Meissner wasn’t even the biggest mover among the women. Canada’s No. 2 entry, Lesley Hawker (a.k.a. Mrs. Doherty), turned in a fine season-ending skate (she’s not on Canada’s world team) to rocket up from 16th after the short to a seventh-place final standing (Fumie Suguri's withdrawal accounted for one of those spots).
No matter where you sit, you’ve gotta love this kind of volatility. The skaters know they’ve still got a shot at the podium if the point gap isn’t too wide. And there’s more drama for the fans.
Good for the skaters, good for the fans ... isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

Dance Fever

There's a delicious duel for global ice dance supremacy already brewing.
And we're still a month away from the Tokyo world championships.
Yes, I'm talking about ice dance.
And no, this isn't a misprint.
Consider what's gone on at the two major competitions that act as table setters (although not necessarily predictors) for the world championships. Two weeks ago, reigning world ice dance champs Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski finished third at the European championships in Warsaw. Knocking them off were gold medallists Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France, and the newest Russian sensations, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who took the silver.
The Bulgarians were third in all three phases of the event. Domnina and Shabalin won the free dance, while the French were tops in the compulsories and the original dance.
Now, there's tonight's result in Colorado Springs, which saw Canadians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon recover from a stumble in the original dance (that knocked them back to second) to take the gold in a sizzling battle with Americans Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto.
To build the intrigue a little more, let's line up the scores (and you can do that now with the current system) that the Fab Five posted at the two major competitions.
Europeans: Delobel/Schoenfelder, 199.47; Domnina/Shabalin, 199.16; Denkova/Staviski, 193.73.
Four Continents: Dubreuil/Lauzon, 198.59; Belbin/Agosto, 196.98.
In other words, one misplaced step here or there, and you can go from first to fifth in a hurry.
So yes, it's looking very much like race for the 2007 world crown is — wait for it — wide open.
And when's the last time we could say that about ice dance?
Yes, ice dance.

A Pair With Heart

Sometime very soon, we’re thinking, the fates of figure skating just have to leave Jessica Dube alone.
Seems like the poor girl’s run of bad luck is never ending.
The latest — and perhaps scariest — evidence of that came Thursday night at the Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs. The petite (she’s 4-foot-11) and sweet 19-year-old from St. Cyrille de Wendover, Que., was cut badly when the skate blade of her partner, Bryce Davison, smacked her in the face (just below the eye) during side-by-side camel spins.
If you’ve seen the photos of Dube lying on the ice with a trail of blood beside her, you also no doubt noted the look of horror in Davison’s face.
Yes, it was that bad.
Dube was kept in local hospital overnight after undergoing surgery for the gash across her left cheek and nose. International Skating Union medical advisor Jane Moran called it a “significant laceration.”
Now the question becomes whether Dube and Davison, the newly crowned Canadian pairs champions, can recover physically and — perhaps more important — mentally in time to skate at the world championships in Tokyo next month.
Given their recent past, don’t bet against it.
Last season, Dube was involved in a serious car accident about six weeks before the Canadian championships in Ottawa. She suffered a sprained wrist that had the couple wondering whether they’d be able to be ready to skate at the Civic Centre (Dube’s knee injury had wrecked their chances at Canadians the season before. They withdrew after the short program).
But not only did they show up in the nation’s capital, they skated well enough to land Canada’s second pairs berth for the Turin Olympics. Then went out and posted the country’s top pairs finish (10th) in Italy.
Fast forward to the current season. Dube needed knee surgery back in September, which kept the couple off the ice for about a month and forced them to play catchup (again) for most of the fall.
Somehow, Dube and Davison got it together in time to go out and win their first Canadian senior title in Halifax.
The lesson in all of this: If you wager against these two, you’ll lose.
Big time.
Nothing, it would appear, can keep them down for long.

Time To Seal The Deal

Here we go again, Joannie Rochette.
Time to put the lesson of Calgary to use.
The three-time Canadian women’s champion finds herself on top of the heap after Thursday’s women’s short program at the Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs.
If the 21-year-old from Ile-Dupas, Que., can maintain that spot after Saturday’s free skate, she’d claim her most significant international triumph yet. And an enormous dose of momentum heading into the world championships in March in Tokyo.
The deal is anything but done, though. With 56.60 points for a short program that, outside of a step out on the front end of her planned triple flip-triple toe combination, was top notch, Rochette posted the score of the night. But she’s got plenty of company nipping at her heels.
American Emily Hughes is a mere 1.26 points behind Rochette. Even reigning world champion Kimmie Meissner of the U.S., who’s down in sixth spot, remains in hailing distance of Rochette, just 4.11 points back.
In other words, Rochette is going to need another quality skate on Saturday just to ensure a podium spot, let alone the gold.
For Rochette, the position should look familiar. At the 2006 world championships, she found herself in first place after the qualifying rounds. It was hardly expected and it showed in the short program: Rochette made two major errors that all but finished her medal hopes.
She vowed then that she’d learned something new about pressure, that it would make her a better skater in the future if/when the situation presented itself again.
Well, it has now.
Time to see whether Rochette has indeed learned how to close the deal.

At The Four Front

Looks like the Four Continents Figure Skating Championship might finally have come of age.
Scan the entry list for the annual event — which begins later today in Colorado Springs — and you’ll see a world champion or medallist in every single discipline. That’s a far cry from the days (not so long ago) when Four Continents was filled with what you’d call a lot of ‘B’-list entries.
No more.
With a nearly two-month gap between Canadian and U.S. nationals and the world championships, Four Continents is the perfect place for skaters to keep sharp for the ultimate test at the end of March in Tokyo.
So it is that, with just two exceptions, Canada’s team in Colorado Springs will mirror exactly the one headed to Japan next month. Vancouver’s Mira Leung has chosen to take a pass on the event (former Canadian champ Cynthia Phaneuf of Contrecoeur, Que., takes her place), while surprise Canadian ice dance bronze medallists Kaitlyn Weaver of Houston, Tex., and Andrew Poje of Kitchener, Ont., will instead head to the world junior championships Feb. 26-March 4 in Oberstdorf, Germany (Vancouver’s Lauren Senft and Leif Gislason of Winnipeg become Canada’s third dance entry at Four Continents).
The quality of the overall field means Canada will be in tough to bring home the raft of medals it’s earned in the past. Expect Montreal’s Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, last year’s world silver medallists, to claim the ice dance gold. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of London, Ont., are good bets to join them on the podium.
Olympic bronze medallist Jeffrey Buttle, who showed at last month’s Canadian championships in Halifax that he’s back in form, rates as the men's favourite this week (Worth noting: Christopher Mabee of Tillsonburg, Ont., won the silver medal in this event a year ago, when he posted all his current ISU-best scores).
Three-time Canadian women’s champ Joannie Rochette of Ile-Dupas, Que., has some serious work to do to reach the podium against a field chock full of top U.S. (world champ Kimmie Meissner, Emily Hughes, Alissa Czisny) and Japanese (Miki Ando, Fumie Suguri) foes.
In pairs, new Canadian champs Jessica Dube of St. Cyrille de Wendover, Que., and Bryce Davison of Cambridge, Ont., face two Chinese teams with world championship pedigree (Qing Pang/Jian Tong and Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao), along with new U.S. champs Brooke Castile and Benjamin Okolski and former American champions Rene Inoue and John Baldwin.
The more interesting question: How will Valerie Marcoux of Gatineau, Que., and Craig Buntin of Kelowna, Que., rebound from being dethroned as Canadian champs in Halifax? No place like here to start making amends.
The ice dance compulsories get the competition started this afternoon, followed by the pairs and men’s short programs. The women get rolling on Thursday.