Loretta,

I went to Nationals and saw Michelle skate. I have seen Michelle
live at Nationals or Worlds 5 out of the last 7 years, and it was not
the best I have ever seen her skate, but it was clearly good enough
to win her 9th Nationals title.

I had not seen Michelle skate her short program to Spartacus before,
and the first practice session when she skated it was incredible.
Not just me but people all around me got goose bumps and were visibly
moved. She was solid during all of her run-throughs and skated with
speed and focus. All week long, it was clear that Michelle came to
win and was the class of the field. When Michelle skated her short,
she was a little tentative and slightly off her music, so it was not
a perfect Michelle skate like Rachmaninoff, but she clearly deserved
to be in first place. But I must say I was much more impressed by
Michelle's short than her long.

When Michelle skated her long to Bolero, she was not as mesmerizing.
I think the choice of music doesn't lend itself to one of
those "bring the whole audience to tears" performances, but why not
stretch and skate to something different every once in a while?
During Michelle's performance on Saturday, when she went into the air
for the second lutz, I had a feeling it would not be a triple because
she wasn't spinning fast enough and her legs weren't as tightly held
together. All throughout the program, she skated more slowly than
she had been in practice and ended after the music. Considering all
the pressure she was under, I thought Michelle was wonderful and got
the job done.

I am really looking forward to the reworked Bolero which I know
Michelle will debut at Worlds. I am looking for more difficult jump
entries, more varied spins, the missing triple loop jump, and a
triple sal-double-loop combination, the latter two of which I saw her
do during practice. It was pretty clear that what Michelle performed
at Nationals is not all she is capable of doing or planning on doing
at Worlds. I say this because all week, she was practicing moves and
jumps that weren't performed during the short and long programs.

I had a feeling Sasha was not going to be totally clean. During
practice, although she landed everything, Sasha doubled a lot of
things when it looked like she was going for triples and fell once in
a while. In comparison, Michelle was a virtual rock all week, only
doubling one jump.

By the way, this is just my opinion, but I think Bebe Liang got the
shaft at Nationals. She is a more complete skater right now who
delivered two better performances. Kimmie Meissner has a great
future, but she is just a work in progress right now. I am not sure
that the tv broadcast conveys how slowly Kimmie Meisner skated during
her long and short programs. She crept along so slowly I thought she
would finish after her music!! I actually thought she was given
inflated presentation scores in her short program, much less in her
long program, given how slowly she skated and how weak her spins were
in comparison to the other ladies. To me, Kimmie's lack of speed
took away from the performance. And when the crowd watched Kimmie's
performance, we basically were silent waiting for her to complete
another jump. It was like there was nothing that impressive about
her skating except the jumps. Her spins appeared well-centered but
lacked speed and had subpar positions. Her spiral was weak too.
Definitely Bebe Liang, but even Katie Taylor, skated with more speed
and had better spins, although they weren't as successful with their
jumps. When Kimmie went up for her triple axel, I thought, oh my
gosh, there is no way she can land it because she doesn't have near
enough speed to complete it. Sure enough, during the replay, it was
clear to everyone in my section that she had cheated her rotations
and there was absolutely no speed or flow coming out of it. In
contrast, the triple axels Kimmie did during practice and warm up
were beautiful--they had great height, complete rotations, and decent
speed and flow coming out of them.

Rhonda


--- In michellekwanworld@yahoogroups.com, LorettaFromFL@w... wrote:
>
> I just joined this group as Michelle is my favorite skater. Did
everyone watch Nationals and what did you think of Michelles programs?