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Quads in qualifying Men go first at World Figure Skating Championships
Posted: Monday March 22, 1999 08:04 PM
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Michael Weiss had felt weighed down going into the qualifying round of the World Figure Skating Championships, but he got rid of the burden when he unleashed his first-ever clean quadruple jump in competition. "It was good to get that monkey off my back," said Weiss, who leads an American men 's contingent that looks stronger than expected against an impressive Russian field. Russia's usual strength in the pairs also came under challenge Monday, as China's Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo nipped at the heels of world champions Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze in the short program, while American pairs were weak: the highest placement was Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman in eighth. As impressive as the quad was as a personal mark for American champion Weiss, its drama was upstaged by compatriot Tim Goebel, who hit the first quad salchow ever accomplished in the world championships. Goebel had previously landed the jump at the Goodwill Games and the junior Grand Prix finals, and registering it at the world championships raises a challenge to others. The salchow is more difficult than the quad toe loops that others do because the skater does not use the toe pick to boost his launch. Four other skaters also managed quads, which just three years ago were very rare: China's Guo Zhengxin, Anthony Liu of Australia, Canada's Elvis Stojko -- still seeming troubled by a year-old groin injury - and Russia's Yevgeny Plushenko. But amid the cavalcade of quads, one of the top performances of the day came from a man who didn't even try one, Alexei Yagudin of Russia. Yagudin placed at the top of one of the two qualifying groups by concentrating on executing lesser jumps with great precision, although he did hit one triple-triple combination. Although he'd done a quad and a quad-triple in practice the day before, Yagudin said he didn't want to take risks in the qualifier, partly because he was nursing a sore calf and partly because he dislikes the new regime under which the qualifying round counts for 20 percent of the final score. "We decided not to skate [the full routine] two times," he said. "This is too stupid." With Plushenko at the top of one qualifying group, Yagudin at the other and Alexei Urmanov just behind Yagudin, the Russians go into the final rounds in a strong position. Many have speculated the Russian troika would sweep the medals, but Yagudin predicted Russians would take no more than two and that Weiss was likely to be the spoiler. Weiss was second behind Plushenko in his group, followed by Stojko. Takeshi Honda of Japan was third in the other group behind Yaguin and Urmanov. In the pairs short program, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze exorcised the demons of illness and haplessness that had plagued them earlier in the season. Berezhnaya streaked a remarkably long distance through the air in a throw triple and the performance was marred only by side-by-side spins that were a bit out of synch. It was a showing that reaffirmed Sikhuralidze's belief that Russians and figure-skating have a special relationship. "You know, the Russian personality, the Russian mind, is really close to figure-skating, because in Russia we have nice ballet, nice theater," he said. Shen and Zhao drew gasps of both delight and dismay -- the former coming with a lovely delayed double twist in which Shen seemed to hang in suspended animation, the latter when she put her hands to the ice coming out of a throw triple loop. Poland's Dorota Zagorska and Mariuz Siudek were in third place at the end of the short program. Current U.S. champions Danielle and Steve Hartsell, plagued by falls, ended in 13th place.
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