|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Comeback kid Weiss takes short program at U.S. Championships
BOSTON (AP) -- He's back! Todd Eldredge? Well him, too. But Thursday night belonged to Michael Weiss, who was staging his own kind of comeback in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. With all the talk about Eldredge's return from a two-year hiatus, two-time defending champion Weiss might have felt like a forgotten man. He's been idle since November, where he struggled to finish sixth at the Cup of Russia. A toe injury and back woes sidelined Weiss -- not that anyone would have known it from his performance in the men's short program. "Just getting a solid program under my belt, because I have had such an injury-prone year, to finally go out there and be able to skate with 100 percent confidence, it's something I haven't felt this year," Weiss said. "It was great for me to go out there and feel like I'm back again." Back with a vengeance. Weiss barely two-footed his quadruple toe loop at the beginning of a combination. But it mattered little to the judges after the bronze medalist at the last two world championships hit every other element. He nailed his triple axel and his footwork into a triple lutz was superb. With excellent spins and an energy that enlivened a basically drab competition, Weiss swept the nine judges. He received seven 5.9s out of 6.0 for presentation. "It's a long road, but sometimes you have to go through it to appreciate it," he said. "I wanted to skate cleanly, stay on my feet and get through this program in first, second or third place. The real thing is on Saturday." That would be in the free skate, worth two-thirds of the total score. Weiss, 24, easily outskated Eldredge, who popped his attempt at the quad -- a jump he never has mastered in competition. "I did two great ones in warmups and felt really good," Eldredge said. "Maybe I wanted to do it so bad I rushed it." Eldredge, 29 and back at nationals after a two-year hiatus, tried to make up for it with his artistry and, in particular, his wonderful spins. "Obviously, the rest of the program was fine, the spins especially," he said. "That (quad) is one element. It's a flaw, it's a mistake, but as long as the rest of the elements are strong, the base mark is strong." But, clearly, the five-time U.S. champion wasn't in Weiss' class this night. Nor was Tim Goebel, the 20-year-old jumping jack who did a big quadruple salchow-double toe loop combo at the start of his program -- by far the main highlight. From there, Goebel, who has been bothered by a strained knee, stepped out of his triple axel and had a very sloppy landing on a triple flip. His slow, inexpressive routine landed him in third place. "It was a disaster," Goebel said. "I still did the only clean quad, but the rest of it was a mess." Trifun Zivanovic was fourth, although his performance was among the cleanest. "I did the best short program of my career out there as far as technical content, artistic performance," said Zivanovic, third last year and second in 1999. "I would have been upset if I hadn't done what I did tonight." Earlier Thursday, Peter Tchernyshev and Naomi Lang won their third straight ice dance title. Tchernyshev, who came to the United States from Russia six years ago, is scheduled to get his U.S. citizenship at the end of the month. He's skated with Lang since 1997 and they now are under the guidance of former world champion Sasha Zhulin. They even earned a perfect 6.0 for presentation despite several mis-steps during their free dance Thursday night. "I will be sworn in on Jan. 29 in Detroit at 8 o'clock in the morning," he said. "It is long awaited, so I am really, really excited about it. That will give us the legal right to represent the United States at the Olympics." Zhulin's influence showed in a program to music representing the seasons; Zhulin and Maya Usova, who won a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics and a silver in 1994, also used it. "Coming up the ranks, out of any other team, they were my favorite and I wanted to be like them," said Lang, of Allegan, Mich. "To have Sasha as our coach is amazing, and to use the music he used ... we have different choreography and different ways of portraying it, but it is also nice to be skating to those themes." In addition to the 6.0, however, they also received a 5.2 for technique. They also got a 6.0 at the 2000 nationals. Second place went to rising stars Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto. While the usual movement in ice dance standings is glacial, Belbin and Agosto followed something of a recent American trend. They were the third U.S. junior champs in the last four years to move into seniors the next season and finish second. Their energetic program proved their victory at the Junior Grand Prix finals last month was no fluke. Belbin is a Canadian citizen, but is eligible to represent the United States at March's world championships. The top two couples will go.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
