SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Skating
SLAM! Stojko
COLUMNS
REVIEW
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Kwan earns gold while Derochie iced
Near perfection in Nagano brought her an Olympic silver medal. Something a little less than that was good enough for gold at the world figure skating championships last night.
Kwan still did put on another show at the Target Center, landing six triple jumps, two in combination, to lock up her second world title in three years. The 17-year-old American's performance wasn't flawless -- she stumbled on a double Axel and doubled a planned triple Salchow -- but it far outclassed this field. She received 5.7s from all nine judges for technical merit, and marks ranging from 5.7-5.9 for presentation.
"I'm happy that I won, but I'm not satisfied with how I skated," she said afterward. "I fought through ... it wasn't the best performance of my life but overall, I'm (feeling) pretty good."
With Olympic champ and American rival Tara Lipinski sidelined by a viral infection and Nagano bronze medallist Lu Chen of China turning pro, the gold medal was Kwan's to lose. Maybe that helped partly explain the butterflies bouncing around in her stomach before she skated.
"What I was most worried about (was) to be able to listen to my music and to skate from the heart, and I felt I did that," she said. "I made a few mistakes but I pushed through and I enjoyed the performance."
Two Russians filled out the rest of the podium, as Irina Slutskaya moved into the silver-medal position with a flurry of triple jumps, and Maria Butyrskaya's elegant, inspired skate pushed her to her first world medal, a bronze.
Meanwhile, Canadian champion Angela Derochie got thrown for a loop at the worst possible time, and the four minutes that followed were nothing but an exercise in survival. It meant a less-than-satisfying finish for Derochie at her first worlds.
"I really wanted to prove I could do my stuff with everyone else here," she said last night, choking back the tears as she spoke. "But I couldn't prove anything, because something (bad) happened to me."
For the 24-year-old from Carlsbad Springs, the "something" was a painful pulled hip flexor muscle that Derochie aggravated when she fell on a triple loop during the warmup for last night's free skate. Minutes later, she had to perform her program, and the look in her eyes said it all -- it would be a struggle every step of the way.
"We couldn't afford that fall," said her coach, Peter Dunfield.
"That's what really blew it. But she held together as much as she could after that ... she tried everything."
Derochie started well, landing a double toe-triple toe combination, but then came a hard fall on a triple lutz. She did land another triple toe, and a triple Salchow-double toe combo, but two later attempts at triples (flip and Salchow) were turned into doubles.
It was all she could do to hold back the tears as she struggled to the finish.
The skate wasn't enough to hold her 19th placing after the short program, and she slipped to 20th in the final standings.
"I tried to make the best of the situation," she said later. "I did what I could do at the time. It was very hard ... I fought as much as I could. I just told myself to make the best of it, that it would be over in four minutes."
Derochie's result did nothing to soothe the feelings of Canadian Figure Skating Association director-general David Dore, who admitted continued frustration at the failure of Canadian women to achieve a top-level placing.
"I'm exasperated," he said. "I just want a good lady. I was in awe of Michelle Kwan (during Friday's short program) and I was thinking, why can't I find one like that?"
Dunfield took offence to Dore's remarks, saying "it isn't quite that easy -- if it were, it would have been done a long time ago. We have wonderful coaches and depth in Canada. Let them do their work and leave the bureaucracy out of it, and you'll get a better result."