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American Pairs Teams Secure Two Olympic Spots for U.S., Russians Win Gold and Silver

Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin at the 2005 World Championships, photo by Michelle Wojdyla

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(3/16/05) - For the second time in the past year, Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin survived a near-disaster on the ice. But it didn't even seem to slow them down as the Russian duo won the pairs gold medal at the World Championships for the second consecutive year. Their win marks the 32nd World title won by a Russian or former Soviet team since 1965.

Totmianina and Marinin began the season with a near catastrophic fall at Skate America, and nearly ended it with another on-ice accident. In the morning practice, just hours before the competition, Totmianina and Marinin were in their starting position waiting for their music to start when Hao Zhang, skating at full speed, ran into her.

“Suddenly I was hanging in the air," Totmianina said. “It was very painful, very unexpected.”

Their coach, Oleg Vasiliev, said he looked up and saw her twisting in the air – the only problem was they were not supposed to be doing any throw moves yet. Totmianina's wrist, back and an area near her tailbone were sore after the collision.

Vasiliev felt the Chinese skater could have avoided the crash.

“He was skating forward and at the last moment he turned his back. Maybe he miscalculated,” Vasiliev said.

Totmianina, who has demonstrated a propensity for speedy recoveries and a positive attitude in the face of adversity, found an unexpected side-benefit from the accident.

“The pain took away from the attention (pressure) of the skating and maybe it helped,” Totmianina said.

Russians Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov won the silver, and Dan Zhang Dan and Hao Zhang of China finished third.

Two-time World champions Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao of China had been in third place after the short program, but had to pull out of Wednesday's free skate after warm-up when Zhao realized a lingering left ankle injury would not allow him to perform any jumps.

“After Four Continents he trained only every other day and on some training days he couldn't jump at all,” said Bin Yao, Shen and Zhao's coach. “He wanted to skate today but did only a double toe loop in the warm-up.”

Of the two American teams competing, Rena Inoue & John Baldwin came out on top, finishing one spot ahead of Katie Orscher & Garrett Lucash

After two straight 10th-place World Championship performances, Inoue and Baldwin dropped a place to 11th. Their free skate was solid, with the exception of a singled Axel by Inoue and the doubling of a Lutz by Baldwin. Despite their errors, the pair was less than a point from finishing in the top 10.

“It's inspiring to come to these events and see teams ahead of you and see what you need to do for the future,” Baldwin said. “It's an honor for us to be here with the top teams.”

Orscher and Lucash started strong then seemed to tire over the last half of their program and suffered through some mistakes.

“Some parts could have been stronger, but we came in today fighting to skate better and show the judges what we can do,” Orscher said. “I felt we had a good first half.”

In the end, the Americans' performance was considered a success, as they secured two spots for the United States at next year's Olympics in Torino, Italy.