Russian figure skaters set early marker
Print Edition
Russia’s highly-vaunted figure skaters rode a patriotic wave to lay down a formidable marker at the Sochi Games on Thursday.
Yevgeny Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic figure skating champion, justified his controversial selection as the Russian veteran helped the hosts lead the new team competition.
Plushenko, 31, placed second in the men’s short program in a three-quarter full Iceberg Skating Palace behind inspired Japanese 19-year-old Yuzura Hanyu. World champions Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov then put Russia top when they later waltzed to the lead in the pairs event.
Russia leads with 19 points with Canada second on 17 and China sitting two points behind. Japan is fourth with 13 points despite Hanyu’s heroics in the men’s event as their pairs duo Narumi Takahashi and Ryuichi Kihara placed just seventh in the ten-team field.
Plushenko reeled off a quad-triple toeloop combination, followed by a triple axel and triple lutz in his “Tango de Roxanne” from the “Moulin Rouge” soundtrack. “After 12 surgeries on my body that I can skate in a fourth Olympics is great,” said Plushenko.
Even Russian tennis diva Maria Sharapova, watching from the stands, got caught up in the electric atmosphere.
“Watched the pairs skating for the very first time. Didn’t think I would be so nervous,” tweeted Sharapova in town as a consultant with NBC.
The home team’s performances on the ice set a confident tone ahead of the US$50 billion Games’ opening ceremony.
American skier Bode Miller and Jamaican bobsleigh pilot Winston Watts, with a combined age of 82, had earlier surged into the Olympic spotlight.
Miller, 36, began his campaign for a sixth medal at the Games by clocking the fastest time in the first men’s downhill training run in Rosa Khutor. The American was quickest with 2min 07.75sec but warned much could still happen before tomorrow’s medal race.
“It’s great to win the first training run (but) it really is going to be about who improves the most from here, who learns this course the best,” he said.
Second fastest was Swiss sensation Patrick Kueng, just 0.03sec behind Miller’s time, followed by Austria’s medal hope Matthias Mayer.
Where Miller was smooth, the women’s downhillers suffered bumps and bruises before Austria’s Anna Fenninger topped the standings of their downhill outing. But that came only after a lengthy stoppage as organizers were forced to alter the configuration of the final jump.
Fenninger timed 1:41.73, finishing 0.21sec ahead of Fraenzi Aufdenblatten of Switzerland, with American veteran Julia Mancuso, the 2010 downhill silver medallist, third quickest.
Jamaica’s Olympic bobsleigh team, destined to become the darlings of Sochi, pleaded with their adoring fans to stop sending money to fund their rags-to-riches story.
Pilot Watts, 46, admitted that the Internet campaign to fund their trip had been such a success that he and brakeman Marvin Dixon feared they would be damned as greedy opportunists if they didn’t call a halt.
“The donations were just coming on and on. We had to stop them. We’ve called a press conference to do it,” said Watts after raising US$178,000. “We just didn’t want them to think that we’re greedy people.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
