No speed skating today so had a long lie in! Feel a bit lazy but hey ho I think I need the rest, I am starting to feel like I have been dragged through a hedge backwards and probably don’t look much better!
Went down to the IBC in the early afternoon and did a bit of research for the Ravensburger Waltz, you know really interesting stuff like 41 steps, 2 sequences, skated counterclockwise round the rink etc……. After filling my head with trivia and scintillating technical information I went to the rink:
I know I have sent you this before but just in case you have forgotten what it looks like, this is the Palavela and the view from my commentary position. I am running out of photos and have lost one of the lenses to my camera. But fear not I have another plan to get new pictures for you. Eurosport have given me a cell phone (mobile for the English readers) for the two weeks and apparently if I take a photo with this I can down load it from some website in cyberspace. So tonight I will get a shot of Simon and I in our commentary position, I bet you can't wait!
Yesterday I said there were 30 compulsory dances; in fact it ended up being 24 phew!
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p1
So here we go, Drobiazko and Vanagas were in the first group. I love them and thought they skated well although a little cautious. In the second group it was the Ukrainians Grushina and Goncharov who caught the judges eye. Now I know I am not a dancer but please! What were the judges looking at? They put them into the lead after skating at half the speed of anyone else and really holding back. Out of all the compulsory dances this is definitely one that you have to attack, anyway I soon recovered and regained my composure for the next group.
The World Champions were skating back to back with the Americans, a perfect draw for the commentators and analysts. The Russians Navka & Kostomarov went first and skated well. They were not as smooth as normal, perhaps a little nervous and you can forgive them that, but never the less very good. The Americans Belbin and Augusto looked very relaxed (if that’s the right word – skating in your first Olympics – How the heck can you be relaxed?) I think I will change it to composed. They skated well and would eventually finish in 6 th but there is nothing in it.
Well moving on, the real story came in group number 4 when the Italians got on the ice. My goodness I have never heard such a din in an ice arena, perhaps with the exception of when Annisina and Piezerat won the worlds in Nice in 2000.
p2
They skated their Ravenburger which in all honesty was better than I had expected. He is not a great skater but I felt he did an ok job, good enough indeed for 4 th or 5 th place. Well would you Adam and Eve it, the judges put them into first place! Were they watching the same performance as me? Had I missed something? Was it possibly one too many red wines last night and I was starting to hallucinate? I quickly looked down the row of commentators for moral support and thankfully they all had their head in their hands. I thought the French commentator was going to leave his booth. He is a rather colourful character, (I am staying with English spelling for today) but really knows his stuff as I thought I did. After seeing the reaction of all the other commentators I felt more confident and gave the judges a hard time!
In my view they should probably get rid of the judges and replace them with the Olympic Mascots Reve and Nerv. I am quite confident they could do a good job and thinking about it, the ISU would not have had to spend 5 million Swiss Francs on a new system! |
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p3
Oh well this is how it looks after the compulsories and in the words of Marina Annisina “The competition starts on Sunday with the original”
Ice Dancing - Compulsory Dance
Just for the record I thought the Bulgarians were by far and away the best but when you look at the scores anything can happen and it probably will!
After the dance we headed back to the media village (we have started to take taxis now instead of the hour bus ride) and had a nice steak accompanied by the occasional sip of Chianti – Oh I love Italian wine!
p4
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