Win for Weiss
New champion at U.S. nationals
Posted: Monday February 15, 1999 01:34 PM
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Keeping his cool: After falling, Michael Weiss landed a triple axel-triple toe and a triple flip-triple toe. AP |
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- After two years of barely missing a
national title, Michael Weiss was nearly flawless Saturday in
winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Weiss fell early on his quadruple toe loop, but it didn't matter
after he hit eight triple jumps, four in combination. He came to
nationals a heavy favorite following runner-up finishes to Todd
Eldredge the last two years, and he responded to the pressure with
a strong showing.
"I worked real hard for this," Weiss said. "I felt like this
was my national championships and I didn't want anyone to take it
away from me."
Weiss, 22, of Fairfax, Va., leads a young squad to next month's
world championships. Only Weiss, who was seventh at the Nagano
Olympics last February and sixth at the 1998 worlds, has much
international experience on the senior level. And he hadn't won a
major competition since 1996.
The surprise member of the three-man world team is Trifun
Zivanovic, who surged from seventh in '98 to second this year. The
23-year-old from Los Angeles drew a standing ovation for his
routine to "West Side Story." He nailed seven triple jumps in the
best performance of his career, capping a solid season in which he
has not finished worse than second in four events.
When he was done, Zivanovic saluted the crowd, throwing kisses
and pumping his arms. When he reached the kiss-and-cry area, coach
Gary Visconti placed a hat on Zivanovic's head and he wildly waved
it in the air.
"This is one of the greatest feelings in my life," Zivanovic
said. "It's a dream come true."
Third place went to Timothy Goebel, the only American to land a
quad in competition. Goebel did that last year when he won the
Junior Grand Prix final, but he crashed on the quad salchow
Saturday.
Still, the 18-year-old from Rolling Meadows, Ill., did enough to
get onto the team for worlds at Helsinki.
Weiss also won the short program, as expected. But he lacked
fire in that performance, and he was solid -- if not spectacular --
in the free skate, worth two-thirds of the total score.
Portraying the good warrior from "Mulan," he completed the
four rotations on his opening quad toe loop, but couldn't hold the
landing and hit the ice. Weiss came up determined, hitting a triple
axel-triple toe, followed by a triple flip-triple toe.
As the crowd warmed to him, Weiss knocked off one element after
another to complete his climb from 1994 world junior champion to
king of U.S. skating.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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