Figure Skating in Scandinavia

“In general, the quality of the skating at Worlds was far better than at the Olympics. It was nice to see so many clean or almost clean skates again. I was happy to see Brian Joubert put it all together again in the Men's competition, after having a tough season. He skated with much more power and speed now than at the Olympics, which made both programs (that I have previously disliked a little because of all the skating on two feet) so much more interesting. With a better qualification skate he might well have been the gold medallist. Lambiels triple axel was once again downgraded but his skating and jumping otherwise was excellent, and he is absolutely a worthy winner. It was especially nice to see that some of his spins had the speed he used to have in the 6.0-system. Evan Lysacek got the bronze thanks to a wonderful free skate. I checked his quad and first triple axel in the qualification, two jumps on which he fell, and I wouldn't have argued with the specialist if he had downgraded the jumps to triple toe and double axel. It seems though they were called quad and triple because of the "in favor of the skater"- rule, since the underrotation was so slight and hardly even visible (we are talking one or two "minutes" of the clock under 1/4 revolution as I see it). So I guess it is ok after all, I thought at first that the underrotation was worse. Other skaters that impressed me were Emanuel Sandhu, Tomas Verner and Anton Kovalevski. Koffe had the best free skate of this season and I hope he can build on that for next season. I think it was important that he ended the competition with a decent skate and I am hoping he can do even better next year. Kimmie Meissner was a huge surprise for me. I knew she could jump like that, but I never thought the judges would give her components like that. It was funny to see how her components increased by over one full point from the qualification to the free skate. I personally think that she won fairly, but that she got way too much for presentation, both in the short but especially in the free. She had over 60 points when Sasha Cohen, who to my opinion is far far better, got 61. Sarah Meier skated brilliantly and gives me so much more than Meissner's skating, and she received component scores around 52 points. That is not good judging. Cohen, by the way, was gorgeous as always, but needs to do something to get that jump stability, or else I am afraid she will have to settle for other medals than gold in the future. Fumie Suguri skated well but it wasn't enough when Meissner got the scores she got, especially when Suguri made a couple of mistakes. Apart from Meier, I also really liked Yukari Nakano's short program, full of power and great spins. And Amanda Nylander did what no one expected, the three best skates of her life. I was completely stunned and blown away by the fact that she skated so incredibly well. She is my biggest idol now! I think we can all learn from Amanda, I hope her performance here takes away some of the respect that us swedes have for the big championships. The finns were really nice to watch too, especially Kiira Korpi's majestetic triple toe -triple toe combination. So it seems the future is bright for scandinavian skating!”