No Surprises at European Championships
by Sal Zanca, Special to U.S. Figure Skating Online |
| Evgeny Plushenko Photo by Paul Harvath |
(1/23/06) - Evgeny Plushenko was sick for three days. He ended his gold-medal winning free skate at the 2006 European Championships in Lyon, France, flat on his back in exhaustion. Yet he still won.
“We decided to come and try to compete,” Plushenko said. “This is preparation for the Olympics. It is the last competition (before the Olympics).”
He won a fifth men's title to seal the sixth Russian sweep of gold at the event since 1997.
Now he has taken revenge against Stephane Lambiel, who took the World title in his absence last year.
Lambiel was second overall and France's Brian Joubert was third.
Plushenko opened with a quadruple jump and added seven more triples in his routine to “The Godfather.” He did two triple Axels, including one in combination with a triple toe and a double loop.
He tired near the end of his routine, showing the effects of the flu, by doubling a Salchow and slowing on his spins.
As soon as Plushenko finished the routine, he went flat on his back on the ice to rest. Still, he was by far the best. The Russian scored 245.33 points, followed by Lambiel with 228.87 and Joubert with 222.95.
“It was very difficult to skate the program because I'm still not healthy,” Plushenko said. “After the third minute I couldn't breathe. I was gulping for air, like a fish out of water. Yeah ... It was hard.”
Lambiel had to step out of a triple toe loop when he landed too close to the boards after a quad. He put a hand down on a second quad. He also stumbled twice in his footwork.
But he managed a triple Axel to start the program, the jump on which he fell during the short program.
“It was important to land the triple Axel today,” he said. “In my mind I don't have any problems with this jump. I was very confident and I had no doubt of landing the Axel.”
Joubert missed his triple Axel twice. He landed a quad but slipped right after it.
“I did a stupid mistake on the quad,” Joubert said. “It was a good jump.”
The Olympics are next month, and Joubert is ready.
“Now is not the time to be 100 percent," Joubert said.
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| Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov File photo by Michelle Wojdyla |
Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the ice dancing title as expected. But getting their third straight title wasn't easy for the Russians.
They had to endure a smaller-than-Olympic-size rink, a third in the compulsory dance, Navka's cut on her hand in the final that required stitches, and the wrath of an unhappy French crowd.
Compared to this, Torino should be a snap.
During the medal ceremony, the French fans showed their displeasure with boos and whistles.
“I think they were upset because the French team got fourth,” Kostomarov said. “I skated well. I got first place. What can I say?”
“I understand the audience because the French couple didn't get a medal,” silver medalist Ruslan Goncharov said. “For the audience it's difficult to understand the system.”
There wasn't much new in the free dance, however. Navka and Kostomarov performed their free dance to the tried-and-true “Carmen.” Elena Grushina and Goncharov of Ukraine used the Oksana Grishuk-Evgeny Platov 1997 hit “The Feeling Begins,” also used by Michelle Kwan as short program music a couple of years ago.
Their routines had the difficulty and the elements, but they may not have had the glitz of Lithuanians Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas to “The Phantom of the Opera.”
The audience loved them as well as French duo Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder, whose mask-oriented free dance was a fan favorite but not the judges' favorite.
Add to that, Delobel and Schoenfelder were competing in their country, hometown, and they were surrounded by hundreds of publicity boards showing them in one of their numerous poses.
No wonder the Lyonnais people were upset.
But they also have a short memory.
Schoenfelder fell in the compulsories and the team couldn't recover from its placement.
Navka and Kostomarov did. They came in third in the Tango Romantica, blaming the size of the rink. Other disciplines were affected but the compulsory dance, with its sweeping patterns, was the most affected.
The Russians took over the lead in the original dance and all was right in the world again. Navka said that their third place start may help them win in Torino.
“I told myself that this can happen at the Olympics,” Navka said. “You have to compete against yourself.”
In the free dance, their “Carmen” was dramatic, full of intricate spins and lifts. It even had a little blood.
“I didn't get into the right position, and I tried to grab my blade and hold it close to my head,” said Navka, who cut her hand. “(The cut) is quite deep.”
She received her flowers and medal on the victory stand with a bandaged right hand before heading to the hospital.
In third were Drobiazko and Vanagas, They may be 34 and 35 but “We are like children with the new system,” Drobiazko said.
“The audience likes Rita and Povilas,” Goncharov said. “They came back to competition after four years. However things have changed. It is no longer going out there and skating. A calculator and stop watch are needed now.”
“Honestly when we started, I forgot about the levels (of the elements),” Drobiazko said. “When we finished I thought ‘oops, what about the levels?”
The competition ended with Russians getting six of the 12 medals.
