Australian Keilani Craine looks pumped. It’s Moulin Rouge time.
Finland’s Emmi Peltonen is also 18. She was born in Nashville. Does anyone ever skate to country music? I’d love to hear some bluegrass now.
She starts with a triple-triple and almost falls on the second part. Then she does fall on a triple lutz. That’s two red boxes on the technical score. Her personal best of 107.05 wouldn’t get her into the top three so far, and neither will this. She turns a triple flip into a single, which gets a desultory 0.51 points on the running technical score.
More egregious: This is entirely too much Barbra Streisand. It’s Papa Can You Hear Me from Yentl.
On the bright side, she’s a third-generation Finnish Olympian. Her father and grandfather were ice hockey players.
Score is 101.86. Total is 157.14, dropping her well down the standings.
Kazakhstan’s Elizabet Tursynbaeva is one of many current Olympians coached by the great Brian Orser. Tara Lipinski tells us she has a hip injury. Her triple loop is fine, but her triple lutz deposits her on her backside.
She rallies with a nice triple-triple, then a double axel-triple toe. Then a double axel-double toe-double toe. That’s a lot of takeoffs and landings. They should just call that a Hartsfield or Heathrow.
Her spins getting Level 3 marks until she finishes with a nice Level 4. She’s in the 60s for technical marks, and it’s really hard not to root for her.
Amusing glitch in the feed. I’m getting the audio of an ad for That 70s Show but the video for an Advil ad. I always thought it was a pretty good show.
Anyway, Tursynbaeva makes Orser laugh in the kiss and cry. She gets a 118.30 in the free skate, 177.12 overall. Her mom spins and waves to the crowd. Johnny Weir calls her one of his favorite skate moms.
That was fun.
Just learned something from the expanded broadcast feed …
Jumps in ascending order of point value: Toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, axel.
- Kim (South Korea), 121.38 / 175.71
- Hendrickx (Belgium), 116.72 / 171.88
- Meite (France), 106.25 / 159.92
- Paganini (Switzerland), 101.00 / 156.26
- Li (China), 101.97 / 154.43
- Toth (Hungary) 97.21 / 150.43
Toth did not look pleased after swapping places with Li.
Paganini dropped three whole places. Kim moved up two.
Quick break for Group 2 warmups. More math ahead.
Hungary’s Ivett Toth skated to AC/DC in the short program. Here, it’s Carmen, and she has a flashy red dress and some sultry moves.
She’s no Elizabeth Swaney, that’s for sure. That would be an interesting program. No triple jumps. A bunch of Level 1 spins.
Unfortunately, Toth hits the ice twice. She does land a triple-single-triple combo. Then a triple salchow-double axel, which seems like it should have a much higher base value than it does. She gives a bit of a grimace when she finishes.
That’s the end of Group 1, so it’s time for a scoreboard check …
China’s Li Xiangning is 17 years old, so you could call this a good chance to impress the national federation before Beijing hosts in four years. The spins look nice, though one is only Level 3. The jumps aren’t as fluid as the others, and her technical score is trending about 10 points off the lead.
101.97 in the free skate, 154.43 overall. She was 24th coming into the free skate and will most likely stay there unless Hungary’s Ivett Toth, who’s next, struggles.
Leslie Jones enjoyed Kim’s program:
South Korea’s Kim Hanul skates to Mamma Mia just after we saw an ad for the same. Synergy.
She planned to start with a triple lutz, then a double axel. Just for fun, she added a triple toeloop on each one. That’s good, because she has rough landing on a the first of a planned triple-double-double combo. So it all evens out, sort of.
And she messes with us again at the end, turning a double axel-triple toeloop into a double axel-double toeloop-double loop combo. Her technical score is close to Hendrickx’s, but that program just didn’t seem all that interesting.
She smashes her personal best by nearly 10 points to vault ahead of Hendrickx. OK, then.
France’s Mae Berenice Meite skated to Beyonce in the short program. Here, it’s Chopin. She skips the second half of a triple-triple combo, but a spin that slows down with the music is a beautiful effect.
She’s one of the skaters with a “costume change,” peeling back part of her skirt to reveal some bedazzled stuff underneath. That’s after the Chopin ends, of course. Bedazzling and Chopin would just seem weird.
It’s bouncy music, but she clatters to the ice on a triple lutz attempt. Fun program, but she’s not going to catch Hendrickx.
It’s a 106.25, 159.92 overall, ahead of Paganini (who was one place ahead of her after the short program).
Belgium’s Loena Hendrickx probably expected to be higher than 20th after the short program. She starts with four jumping elements, including a triple-double combo, and lands everything cleanly. Her spins are far more refined that Paganini’s, getting Level 4 grading (the top) across the board.
She’ll be higher than 20th by the end of the night, certainly.
She gets 116.72, actually a few points shy of her personal best. These judges seem tough. Maybe I’ll do some math to figure out why. She did step out awkwardly after one jump, but still. 171.88 total, easily ahead of Paganini.
Switzerland’s Alexia Paganini is skating to a selection from Phantom of the Opera. She’s a 16-year-old from Connecticut who just switched her nationality to her father’s country.
She lands her triple lutz-triple toe combination to start, but she singles a double axel to start her next element. Then she lands a triple-double. That’s a lot of jumping in the first minute of the program. She has another big clump of jumps just after the halfway point for the scoring bonus (jumps in the second half of the program are bumped up 10 percent, which is why the OAR skaters will do very little until then).
It’s clean. Her technical score is in the low 50s. Total for the free skate is 101.00, close to her personal best. Total total is 156.26. She’s in first place. Only 23 skaters to go!
Everyone ready? Here we go …
We’ll start in about 10 minutes, which will be 8:08 p.m. ET. The rest of these times are also ET. (Phone home.)
9:18 p.m.: Kailani Crane, Australia
9:50-10:05 p.m.: Ice resurfacing / fridge run
10:20 p.m.: Karen Chen, USA
10:28 p.m.: Bradie Tennell, USA
10:52 p.m.: Mirai Nagasu, USA
11:08 p.m.: Satoko Miyahara, Japan (fourth after short program)
11:16 p.m.: Carolina Kostner, Italy (sixth; veteran of the field)
11:24 p.m.: Kaori Sakamoto, Japan (fifth)
11:32 p.m.: Alina Zagitova, OAR (first)
11:40 p.m.: Kaetlyn Osmond, Canada (third)
11:48 p.m.: Evgenia Medvedeva, OAR (second)
Midnight: Cinderella. (Go to bed.)
But first, the music …
Best selections and their place in the start order:
4. Kim Hanul, South Korea — soundtrack from Mamma Mia
16. Gabrielle Daleman, Canada — Rhapsody in Blue
Skating to Moulin Rouge
9. Kailani Crane, Australia
(That’s it? Just one this time?)
Skating to Debussy
13. Maria Sotskova, OAR — Clair de Lune
20. Carolina Kostner, Italy — L’apres-midi d’un faune
There is NO, repeat, NO Coldplay in this free skate.
And if you’d like to do the math for yourself, check out ISU Communication 2089 on base values. Then compare that to the planned programs.
Watching NBC’s “pregame” show with Scott Hamilton and Tanith White (formerly Tanith Belbin). White is going over base values for the planned elements and explaining the math behind the OAR skaters’ advantages. I’ve seen economic professors who provide much less clarity to much less complex topics. NBC’s crew is really good.
But I never want to see any of these ads ever again. Ever.
Memory lane …
Barenaked Ladies teaching Canadian skater Jamie Sale (2002 Winter Olympics judging controversy) how to play guitar.
Good evening/morning/afternoon everybody.
Yes, I’m feeling a little sad already. This is the last session of competitive figure skating in these Olympics and therefore our last live figure skating blog for a while. We’ll have the World Championships next month in Milan, but that’s not quite the same.
So let’s enjoy these four hours or so of figure skating. Let’s not worry so much about the fact that the top two are virtually untouchable unless they fall like me on a ski slope. Just enjoy. I’ll be here to talk you through it.
Skating starts in about an hour.