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Sandhu steals spotlight from Stojko
Sandhu, who in his first stab at the senior division one year ago finished second to the three-time world and four-time national champ, grabbed first place in the short program Thursday night to take the lead into Saturday night's free-skating final.
Sandhu, 18, of Richmond Hill, Ont., landed a triple-triple jump combination and two other triples in a clean and artistically brilliant short.
"I felt really uplifted by the audience," Sandhu said. "I felt as if I was floating on the ice."
Stojko, 26, also from Richmond Hill, fell on the triple Axel entry to his required combo, and lifted himself up from the ice slowly. He recovered sufficiently to get second place. Impression marks as high as 5.9 of the possible 6.0 pulled him up.
"That's the way it goes," Stojko said to coach Doug Leigh as the two awaited the marks. "Well, at least I gave the cameras lots of shots of me sliding across the ice."
He had intended to try a quadruple jump, but begged off after the fall.
"It was too hard to regroup to try the quad," he explained.
Jeff Langdon, 23, of Barrie, Ont., also lost marks for falling on his required combo, but scraped into third spot just ahead of Jayson Denommee, 21, of Asbestos, Que., who twice placed a hand down on jump landings.
The short was worth one-third the total mark. Any one of the top three in the standings now can win the gold medal by getting top marks in the free-skating final, which is worth the other two-thirds of the total.
Canada is allowed two men's singles skaters at the world championships in Helsinki in March.