I'm going to make it a point to watch the live web stream tonight instead. NBC only showed the Knierims and bits and pieces of the last two groups.
Bronze medal position and 9th place are separated by a mere 2.82 points! Based on what I saw last night I tend to agree with that narrow spread. Personally, I would've even had Marchei & Hotarek and James & Cipres skating in the final group along w/Sui & Han and Tarasova & Morozov -- I really, really would! I'm sure someone will argue, and probably correctly, the relative inferiority of some of their individual pairs elements and/or that they skate slower. I'm sorry, but I didn't see that at all: to me, both of these teams PERFORMED and NAILED their elements better than the teams sitting in 3rd and 4th places. I think this is another case of the performance as a whole being greater than the sum of the technical elements and program components.
Savchenko & Massot's SP was actually the most disappointing performances for me last night. That program, when executed perfectly, is absolutely dynamite. Kudos to them for trying valiantly to sustain the performance, but a lot of the energy was zapped out since everyone knew that mistake was very, very costly. Sadly, their Olympic Gold Medal chances got flushed down the toilet in a matter of a second with Massot's doubled Salchow.
I was really looking forward to them dueling w/Sui & Han for the big prize and having them come out victorious, but I think Savchenko is headed for a third Olympic bronze medal, at best.
Duhamel & Radford looked slow to me and their elements weren't exactly sharp: their sbs 3Lutz were way off synch and the throw 3Lutz had a clear touchdown of her second foot. I can't imagine how the judges could've missed those glitches. When they're not perfectly on technically, I think it exacerbates the fact that Duhamel is not a natural performer. Johnny Weir said as much. She executes the choreography, but it often comes across as contrived. They lack that natural charisma and ability to draw you in to their performance in the same way that Sui & Han have really learned to do or even how Marchei & Hotarek performed last night.
Your thoughts...