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World Figure Skating Championships Notebook
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Finns say they are the world's most sports-minded people, but figure skating hasn't been one of their strengths.Finland, a country of only about 5 million, has earned 432 Olympic medals, which officials say is the highest number per-capita of any country. Only one medal, however, has been in figure skating -- in 1920 when Walter and Ludowika Jakobsson took the gold.
And although it's a country that loves winter sports, Finland has been the host for only the Summer Olympics. But Helsinki is one of the cities bidding for the 2006 games and promoters have chosen Finland's most famous figure skaters, Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko, to help the cause.
Rahkamo and Kokko never won an Olympic medal, thanks to Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. Just prior to the 1994 games, professionals were allowed to return to Olympic competition. Torvill and Dean took advantage of that one-time opportunity and denied Rahkamo and Kokko a spot on the podium.
The Finns won the European ice dance championship in 1995 and were runners-up for the world title.
They are eager to bring the Olympics to Helsinki.
"We competed in two Olympics, so we know what the athletes need," Rahkamo said.
"In 1993 the European championships were in Helsinki. It was an exhilarating feeling to compete at home. ... We would like to give all the Finnish athletes the chance to compete at home in the Olympics in 2006. It would create an awesome legacy."
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REPLAY FOR SHORT PROGRAMS: Spectators aren't the only ones who have a tough time seeing if a whirling skater landed a clean quad jump or two-footed it. Even the judges can miss such split-second subtleties.
This year, the International Skating Union has started using a sophisticated instant-replay video system in the short programs to help them.
The system, which also has been used at the European Championships and the Four Continents competition, uses a single video camera positioned at one end of the rink that records every performance.
When the system coordinator sees a skater beginning preparation for one of the required elements, he records the next few seconds of skating digitally and codes that segment.
Each judge has a small video monitor and a control panel with a touch-sensitive screen with a small section for each of the elements. At the end of the performance, if the judge wants to review a particular move, he touches the appropriate section and the move shows up instantly, in slow-motion, on the video screen.
System coordinator Ted Barton said the instant-access video takes some pressure off judges, because in the past if they had been unsure about how a move was executed, the uncertainty could distract them from the rest of the skater's program.
"Now, they feel more comfortable through the whole program," he said.
But the pressure that's off them is now on Barton, who's responsible for making sure each move gets recorded.
"You can't daydream," he said.