Saturday, February 16, 2002
Vote's in: 4th so far
By STEVE BUFFERY -- Toronto Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- It was difficult to tell if the judges gave Canadian ice dancers Shae Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz the old vote-trading two-step last night.
But one thing is for certain, Bourne and Kraatz didn't thrill the judges at the Salt Lake Ice Center, even though both their quickstep and blues compulsory dances were right on.
The Canadians were placed fourth, behind their long-time rivals Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France, Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh of Russia and defending world champions Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy.
The four-time world championship bronze medallists earned two third-place votes, five fourth-place votes and two fifth-place votes. Interestingly, one of the judges who placed the Canadians fifth after the first ice dance was Alla Shekhovtsova, a Russian judge.
'SAVE YOUR ENERGIES'
Leading into the competition, there were reports that the Russians and the French had made a vote-swapping deal -- that the French would prop up the Russians in the pairs and the Russians would prop up the French team in the ice dance.
Yesterday, French pairs judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne was suspended by the International Skating Union for admitting that she was influenced to vote for the Russians in the pairs.
Shekhovtsova scored the French dance team, Anissina and Peizerat, first in both compulsory dances last night. After scoring the Canadians fifth in the first compulsory, she scored them fourth in the second.
But none of the ice dancers reacted negatively or suspiciously to the scoring.
"I'm not worried," said Kraatz, 30. "It's the beginning of the event, there's two more courses to go (original and free dance) so I think one of the things we've really learned (is to) focus on your job. Save your energies as much as possible for the most important thing: Skating on the ice."
"The most important thing is to have confidence in ourselves," Peizerat said. "What is important to us is to skate our best. The rest is, I would say, not our business because we can't do anything about it."
Bourne and Kraatz created a stir at the 1998 Nagano Olympics when they were placed fourth after a wonderful free dance and original program. Afterwards, it became clear that bloc judging was occurring and the Canadian team's position out of the medals had been pre-ordained.
'SKATED REALLY WELL'
The past few years, Bourne and Kraatz fought back to world prominence and, in fact, won the Grand Prix final in December in Kitchener against most of the top teams here, including the French.
Prior to the Salt Lake Olympics, there were published reports that the fix was in for these Games and the Canadians would be placed fifth. And while they fell to fourth last night, Bourne, 26, insisted she is not in a panic mode about the judging.
"It's encouraging because we still have a short and a long to do and they're very solid programs, so certainly movement can happen," Bourne said. "But today we really skated well.
"Vic and I really just tried to keep ourselves separate from what was going on, because it's easy to get caught up in the media and commotion, but we still have to compete."
If there was one troubling trend in the judging last night, it was the lack of movement after the second dance. The order of the top 10 dancers did not change after the second dance from the first. The second Canadian dance team Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon of Longueuil, Que. are 11th overall.
2002 Games Figure Skating Coverage
