By Pritha Sarkar
NICE, France, April 1 (Reuters) – If anyone had suggested a
week ago that Carolina Kostner would be the only gold medallist
at the world championships to produce a flawless free skate, it
would have been scoffed at as an April Fools joke.
Yet the 25-year-old was having the last laugh this weekend
after she put paid to theories that she spent more time crashing
to the ice than staying upright with her stirring performance to
Mozart’s Concerto No. 23.
Kostner, who became the first Italian to win the women’s
world crown, will not have much time to savour the triumph
though as Saturday’s win would have again raised expectations
that she could finally end her Olympic nightmare and win gold at
the 2014 Sochi Games.
However, if her dreams are anything to go by, Kostner is
unlikely to get much sleep over the next two years.
“When I dream about figure skating, these dreams are never
good. Either I am late to the warm up or I have problems with my
laces,” Kostner told reporters.
The other winners in Nice are already considered as Olympic
front runners but they were left cursing a host of silly
mistakes that could have easily cost them their titles.
Vancouver champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir captured
their second ice dance world crown but failed to produce the
“fairytale performance” they had hoped for. They described their
interpretation of the Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire musical ‘Funny
Face’ as a programme littered with “bobbles” and “stumbles”.
Aliona Savchenko certainly looked livid as she aimed an
imaginary gun at her partner in the kiss-and-cry area after
Robin Szolkowy messed up their synchronised spins by starting on
the wrong foot and also singled an Axel.
“I was really angry at him for messing up the spin,” said
Savchenko after the Germans snatched their fourth title by
edging out Russians Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov by just
0.11 of a point.
CHEERS OR JEERS
But if there was one performance the French crowd felt
particularly short changed by, it was Patrick Chan’s.
The fans booed, jeered and hissed for more than 10 minutes
after the Canadian was declared the winner despite crashing to
the ice on a relatively simple double Axel.
If Chan was rattled, he certainly hid it well and passed off
the incident as “background noise” that will serve him well in
Sochi when the fans will be extremely vocal in their support of
the Russians.
“I didn’t actually notice the noise. I could just sort of
hear it in the background,” Chan said after he became the first
man since Stephane Lambiel in 2006 to win back-to-back titles.
“I wasn’t sure if it was cheers or jeers but either way it
was pretty cool.
“The crowd really got into it, which is what I want to see
in skating more. Olympics in Sochi will be even crazier so this
was good practice.”
Turning a deaf ear to such distractions might not be a bad
thing but what Chan cannot gloss over is that, despite being
undefeated since 2010, he failed to pull off two clean
programmes in any of his five international competitions this
season.
“Every time I walk on to the ice for a competition, my goal
is to do a clean programme and to perform my heart out. I get
goosebumps doing the programme every time,” Chan told Reuters
before the start of the season about his Concierto de Aranjuez
free skate.
However, rather than experiencing goosebumps, Chan has had
to get used to suffering a multitude of bumps and bruises as
witnessed by those in Nice who saw him holding an ice pack to
his black-and-blue body following the Axel mishap.
If the trend continues, he might see a new upstart such as
17-year-old Nice bronze medallist Yuzuru Hanyu steal his
thunder. Yevgeny Plushenko, the 2006 Turin winner who is
recovering from knee surgery, will also be pushing hard to
succeed in front of his home fans.
Canada topped the medals table this week with two golds but
for nations such as Japan, Russia and the United States, who all
won minor medals, the championships showed just how much ground
they need to make up if they are to make an impact in Sochi.
(Editing by Patrick Johnston)
