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U.S. women can finish 1-2-3 Posted: Thursday January 17, 2002 5:40 PM
Mark A. Lund, publisher of International Figure Skating Magazine, last week was in Los Angeles at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Here he gives his thoughts on some of the highlights of U.S. Nationals and what to look for in the remaining days before the torch is lit in Salt Lake City. To read more about some of the stars of the skating world, please check out http://www.ifsmagazine.com/. Question: Can all three of the U.S. women -- Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Sarah Hughes -- wind up on the Olympic podium? Lund: There's no question the American ladies who are going to the Olympic Games could easily be one, two and three in Salt Lake City. The only real competition they have is Irina Slutskaya of Russia. Q: What do you think is the strongpoint of each of three American women? Lund: Michelle Kwan brings experience and maturity. The only seeming weak point is -- and she proved us all wrong at Nationals -- is she doesn't have a coach. She obviously doesn't need one. Sasha Cohen's positives are this balletic quality to her skating. Her perhaps perceived negative is her lack of experience with the judges in the international competitive arena. Sarah Hughes brings a consistency and certainly a championship level of skating to her performances. But she doesn't have the experience Michelle Kwan has at the Olympic level. Q: Do you feel that Sasha Cohen was trying to psyche out Michelle Kwan in the warm-up for the free skate by skating so close to her? Lund: No skater, at least in my experience, tries purposely to psyche out another skater on the warm-up. You have six skaters on these warm-ups all practicing very difficult maneuvers and tricks on the ice. It's inevitable that on even more than one occasion two of them can run into each other. It just happens. It's a fact of the sport. Q: Michelle Kwan did say it rattled her a bit. After the warm-up she took a minute to compose herself. If she is rattled by such a near collision, how is she going to overcome it if there's a moment like that at the Olympics? Lund: This comes down to the sport itself. When you have all these skaters practicing on the ice. There's no question but that a near collision can rattle someone, especially when it's very close. Especially if you're the first to skate after the warm-up. You need time to compose yourself mentally, think it through and then be ready to skate. Q: Let's talk about the men. Do you think the three U.S. men have the potential to truly challenge the Russians -- Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko? Lund: The American skaters -- Todd Eldredge and Timothy Goebel, I have to leave Michael Weiss out for the moment -- can most certainly challenge the Russian skaters. Timothy and Todd and even Michael know that the U.S. Nationals were not the Olympic Games. Their goal was making this Olympic team. No question about it, each one of these three men are going to pull out their full bag of tricks because all three of them want a medal. They'd love to do a one, two and three. I don't see that happening. But they're going to pull everything out for the Olympics. They have to. Q: Would you say no one wanted to peak at U.S. Nationals because they're saving it for Salt Lake City? Lund: Yes. An experienced competitor knows when to peak and when not to peak. Michelle Kwan is probably the best example of that. It's well known that Michelle crescendos throughout a season up to the World Championships. This is historical Michelle. She knows she didn't need a triple/triple combination at Nationals if she could skate the performances we're used to seeing her skate. She did, so she didn't need it. Todd Eldredge proved that he didn't need a quad to win Nationals even though Timothy Goebel did one in combination in the long program. Of course, Timothy also fell on one. The skaters know what they probably have to do to win certain types of events. At an Olympics or a Worlds, you have to pull every possible trick out of the bag to make sure that you accomplish what you can potentially accomplish. Q: Do the U.S. Pair Champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman have any chance to medal in Salt Lake City? Lund: Not unless the current favorites make a variety of mistakes. Q: And the U.S. Ice Dance Champions Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev? Lund: They have no chance of medaling at these Olympics. They'll be looking at the top five, but they'll probably wind up somewhere in the top 10. Q: What are the members of the U.S. figure skating team doing between now and Salt Lake City? Lund: Each one of them is probably looking at their program from Nationals and seeing where they can improve it -- maybe what they want to do differently. They're talking to their coaches or other supporters to find out what their key international competitors are doing. And then they strategize accordingly. Every one of them is going to have to do something different and better when they get to the Olympics in order to medal or win. This is the highest level of competition in the world. They're probably reflecting on their own performances from Nationals and eagerly awaiting the results of Europeans, being held this week in Lausanne, Switzerland, and going forward from there.
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