Saturday, February 9, 2002
Two for the show
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
SALT LAKE CITY - It's 10 straight wins versus 10 straight golds.
David Pelletier shrugged his shoulders when he heard that Sports Illustrated, in its Olympic predictions, gave the Russians the gold and the Canadians the silver.
"I'm sure they made their prediction knowing that the Russians have won 10 straight Olympic gold medals in pairs skating. If you pick the Russians to win gold in pairs, you're going to have a pretty good batting average.''
Canada hasn't won an Olympic gold in the event, or indeed in the sport, since Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul won gold in 1960 in Squaw Valley, California.
But this year Canada has sent the defending world champions, and Jamie Sale and David Pelletier go into their Olympics here tonight on a 10-event winning streak.
But they're not Russian.
They are not following the tradition of Liudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, who won two Olympic golds, or Irina Rodnina who won three with two partners, and the legendary G & G, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, who won two as well.
The Russians they must beat are Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, the pair that won silver four years ago in Nagano, finishing behind Russians Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev.
The Russians finished second to Sale & Pelletier at the Vancouver Worlds last year and in the last two ISU Grand Prix finals. Third in all three events were Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao of China.
There is every reason to expect it'll be those three pairs 1-2-3 after the short tonight, which would leave them with a winner-takes-all long -program final Monday night with Sale & Pelletier going back to their signature Love Story program after predictably ditching their Orchid long program at least until the Worlds in Japan next month.
The two have been very secure with the short program, which has no name but which has Kurt Browning's fingerprints all over it.
Not many skaters put a comic element in the short program, but Sale & Pelletier have it in the two minutes and 40 seconds you'll watch tonight.
After the two have taken care of the major elements, there is a place in the program where she takes his head to her bosom and he sort of transforms himself into a ball and bounces up and down.
Kurt Browning.
"We wanted to make the short program a bit of a comedy and our choreographer Lori Nichol asked Kurt to help out,'' said Pelletier.
"In our opinion, Kurt is still the best skater in the world and he was a lot of help. The thing about Kurt is that he could play both roles, hers and mine.''
The technical types are more interested in a lift the two produced, which has never been seen before.
"They made it up themselves,'' said coach Jan Ullmark. "The first time I saw it, I said it kind of looked like a pommel horse upside down. It's very, very difficult. If she doesn't make all the right moves, he doesn't have anybody to lift.''
There's debate after the way the two skated at Canadians if there's Olympic pressure buildup here. But the two came to Salt Lake looking and acting very relaxed.
And they're certainly familiar with their surroundings. The pair won the Four Continents pre-Olympic event here last year over the Chinese pair. The Russians did not enter.
But that was then and this is now.
Outside the Delta Centre is a large arrowhead with the Salt Lake City 2002 countdown clock. The countdown has hit zero for Sale & Pelletier.
"It's the Olympics,'' said Pelletier. "You don;t want to be slower, longer and weaker. You want to be higher, stronger, faster.''
2002 Games Figure Skating Coverage
