Matt Savoie says placing high in a figure skating competition always surprises him.
The 20-year-old from Peoria had to be feeling that way again Friday after placing third in the short program of the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo, where Savoie is facing the toughest competition of his career.
Savoie goes into Saturday’s first of two free skates trailing Russians Alexei Yagudin, the three-time world champion, and Evgeni Plushenko, the two-time European champion.
Behind them are U.S. champion Timothy Goebel in fifth place and former world junior champion Ilia Klimkin of Russia in sixth.
Goebel botched two jumps and received technical marks from 4.5 to 4.7.
Yagudin and Pluschenko landed quad-triple combinations, and Yagudin overcame a shaky landing on his triple axel with better presentation marks to beat Plushenko by a 4-3 margin of the judges.
For the women, judges favored Irina Slutskaya of Russia for first place by a 6-1 margin over reigning world champion Michelle Kwan of the United States. Only the U.S. judge chose Kwan, although both skaters delivered clean short programs.
Perhaps more significantly, the judges split 3-3-1 on the presentation marks, usually Kwan’s edge.
“There weren’t any mistakes, but the judges can give you whatever marks they want,” Kwan said.
Those marks clearly are telling Kwan she must up the technical ante to beat Slutskaya, whose jumps, spins and skating speed have been superior.
Sarah Hughes of the United States wound up fifth after a landing poorly on her combination and doing a double flip jump instead of a triple.
