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Canadian stars shine bright
New original dance garners rave reviews for Bourne and Kraatz
Kraatz was born in Germany. The team's coach, Natalia Dubova, is from Russia. Their choreographers, Christopher Dean and Jayne Torvill, are British. They train in the U.S. But Irish seems to be where it's at for the three-time defending world bronze medallists.
Last season, they hit it big -- especially with the crowds -- with their Irish-inspired Riverdance free dance. Last night at Skate Canada, they scored huge with their new original dance, an Irish waltz titled Seachran by the group Clannad.
"After doing Riverdance last year, we thought it would be a nice touch this year to do something Irish," said Bourne, a native of Chatham.
Bourne explained that Seachran, which is sung in Gaelic, is about a man who courts a woman.
"But we made it our own," said Bourne, who actually dates British singles skater Steven Cousins. "We tried to make it airy, soft and beautiful."
They succeeded. Bourne and Kraatz received a standing ovation from the Riverside Coliseum crowd of 4,200 and, more importantly, big scores from the panel of nine international judges. The team was first across the board thanks to marks ranging from 5.6 to 5.7 for composition (out of a perfect 6.0) and eight scores of 5.8 and a 5.9 from the Canadian judge Jack Greenwood for presentation.
That's certainly good news, as the Lake Placid-based team wasn't sure how the judges would react to this new piece given that Bourne and Kraatz complained loud and long last season about biased judging at both the Nagano Olympics and world championships.
Despite being one of the most popular teams on the international circuit, the Canadians just couldn't convince the judges to score them higher than third at the worlds and fourth at the Olympics.
Finishing second in yesterday's original was the team from Lithuania, Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas.
Sylwia Nowak and Sebastian Kolasinki of Poland were third. The second Canadian dance team entered here, Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe of the Centre Gilles Chabot club in Boucherville, Que., were well received by the crowd, but were awarded disappointing ninth-place marks.
"I don't want to be a whiner," Lowe whined. "But this sport is getting to be so irritating to me."
Lowe, 24, was particularly angry with Greenwood, who scored the American team of Debbie Koegei and Oleg Fediukov two spots ahead of the Canadian pair.
"It's annoying when (a team) like that can beat us when we had such a good performance," he said.
Meanwhile, a rumour making the rounds last night was that the Grand Prix Final -- scheduled for March 4-7 in St. Petersburg -- could be moved to either Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, the Kitchener Auditorium or the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, because of the sad state of the Russian economy.