The drama started early. Jamie Sale had a collision with Anton Sikharulidze during the six-minute warmup. It continued with a 5-to-4 decision by the judges that seemed questionable at the time. Now ten years later, we revisit the two programs and see whether or not the judges did the right thing by putting Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharudlize first or the ISU did the right thing by awarding Jamie Sale and David Pelletier the second gold a few days later.
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Related: Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze takes short
I will also add that the analysis that follows is not a matter of North American vs. European or Canadian vs. Russian. Anyone who has read my skating analyses should be well aware that nationalism has nothing to do with what I write.
So who should have won?
Neither team really had an edge over the other when it came to their respective levels of skating – they were equally-matched in different ways, the Russians had a more traditional look whereas the Canadians were more contemporary. Both had chemistry on the ice, both had a great sense of musicality, and both had similar skating skills.
Despite chatter about the contrary, the Russians did not have a more difficult program technically, nor did they have more intricate in-betweens. Both teams did the same side-by-side jump elements and throws, and as with the short program, the Canadians had much stronger lifts than the Russians did.
So that said, you necessarily have to get into the minutia of the program. The glaring error with Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze was his step out of his solo double axel. But further to that, Berezhnaya’s landings on her throws were not nearly as strong as those of Sale. They also had a slight collision on their triple twist, which, again, was not as well executed as that of the Sale/Pelletier. And the execution and difficulty of at least two of the three lifts go to Sale/Pelletier.
All that is to say that Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze’s technical marks should not have nearly been as close, overall across the judges, to those of Sale/Pelletier. In fact, three of the nine judges (Russia, France, Ukraine) marked them as tied in the technical mark, five marked the Canadians 0.1 higher (China, USA, Poland, German, Japan), and Canada put them 0.2 higher.
There are many who would say flat out that Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze had a better program, or that Sale/Pelletier were more engrossing. But, again, having watched both of those programs again, they were similar on different levels. Speed, flow, and general skating skills of both teams were on par with each other. And so, for me, the result came down to technical cleanliness, and Sale/Pelletier had the edge.
The quad salchow that should’ve been
I’d like to look back at 2002 and think that Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao became the first pair to ever land a quad throw. It still deflates me a little watching the landing of that quad salchow. It was an impeccably-executed four revolutions, a clean edge on the landing, and then just a bit too deep on the outside edge. In so many other circumstances, that would not have been a fall, but the pure impact of that throw just made it too heavy to hold that deep edge.
Still, they became pairs legends nonetheless, with another Olympic bronze in Torino after a career-threatening injury and capping their career off with the gold in Vancouver. For me, Shen and Zhao’s longevity and the magic they created on the ice later in their career made them one of the truly best pairs in the history of skating.
A second misjudge
During my look at the short program, I said that Shen/Zhao were the most underrated pair in the competition. Well, Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman were the second most underrated pair. There was absolutely no way that they should have been ranked behind Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin. Ina/Zimmerman skated superbly throughout, whereas Totmianina/Marinin were labored during the second half of their program. It was, again, a 5-4 decision from the judging panel.
And while Totmianina/Marinin had a more technically-difficult program planned, their underrotated triple twist should have dropped their technical mark to the same level as Ina/Zimmerman’s technical mark. But four of the judges actually marked them higher. As much as some may scoff at the IJS, it would not nearly be as easy for this type of poor technical judging to occur in present-day figure skating.
The second American pair, Tiffany Scott and Philip Dulebohn, had to count falls on both of their throw jumps and finished 13th.
PAIRS (final standings)
1. Elena Berezhnaya/Anton Sikharulidze RUS VIDEO
1. Jamie Sale/David Pelletier CAN VIDEO
3. Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao CHN VIDEO
4. Tatiana Totmianina/Maxim Marinin RUS VIDEO
5. Kyoko Ina/John Zimmerman USA VIDEO
6. Maria Petrova/Alexei Tikhonov RUS VIDEO
7. Dorota Zagorska/Mariusz Siudek POL
8. Katerina Berankova/Otto Dlabola CZE
9. Qing Pang/Jian Tong CHN VIDEO
10. Jacinthe Lariviere/Lenny Faustino CAN
11. Dan Zhang/Hao Zhang CHN VIDEO
12. Anabelle Langlois/Patrice Archetto CAN
13. Tiffany Scott/Philip Dulebohn USA VIDEO
14. Mariana Kautz/Norman Jeschke GER
15. Aliona Savchenko/Stanislav Morozov UKR
16. Tatiana Chuvaeva/Dmitri Palamarchuk UKR
17. Olga Bestandigova/Jozef Bestandig SVK
18. Natalia Ponomareva/Evgeni Sviridov UZB
19. Michela Cobisi/Ruben de Pra ITA
20. Maria Krasiltseva/Artem Znachkov ARM
PLAY-BY-PLAY
Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao CHN – throw quad salchow (fall, Shen caught her outside edge after landing it pretty impeccably, side-by-side double axel-triple toe sequence (Zhao turns out), almost a botched lift (who would’ve thought that would happen again eight years later?), triple twist (nice), spread eagles into side-by-side double axel, throw triple loop (big)
Jamie Sale/David Pelletier CAN – side-by-side triple toe (nice), triple twist, throw triple salchow (smooth), side-by-side double axel-double toe sequence, throw triple loop (solid), super execution on their lifts – ten years later, Sale/Pelletier still takes this one – technically cleaner, lifts were much stronger than the Russians
Elena Berezhnaya/Anton Sikharulidze RUS – side-by-side triple toe (strong), side-by-side double axel-double toe sequence (Sikharulidze steps out of axel), triple twist (slight collision on the catch), throw triple salchow (hangs on), throw triple loop (hangs on), innovative side-by-side spin transition into the pairs spin – more power and speed than their short, a few iffy landings on the throws and the step out of the double axel kept the door open
Tatiana Totmianina/Maxim Marinin RUS – side-by-side triple salchow, triple twist (low and underrotated), throw triple loop, side-by-side triple toe-double toe (Totmianina slight hand down on the triple toe, Marinin did not touch down but was forward), throw triple salchow, finished way after the music – their technical elements were a tad more difficult, but I would have had them below Ina/Zimmerman, especially with the underrotated twist – the last minute of their program was really labored
Maria Petrova/Alexei Tikhonov RUS – side-by-side double axel-triple toe sequence (nice), side-by-side triple toe, triple twist (collision on the catch), throw triple salchow (slow but complete), bunch of crossovers into throw triple toe (hangs on), two-foot skating galore – that program just kept going on and on and on ….
Kyoko Ina/John Zimmerman USA – side-by-side triple toe (nice), side-by-side double axel, triple twist (slight collision on the catch), side-by-side double axel-double toe sequence (Ina hand down on axel), throw triple loop, one of the best lifts in the competition, throw triple salchow – one of the great American pair performances in history
Dan Zhang/Hao Zhang CHN – triple twist (big), side-by-side triple toe, throw triple salchow, side-by-side triple salchow (Dan Zhang singles), throw triple loop (fall), little speed into side-by-side double axel-double flip sequence (Dan Zhang singles axel) – very raw team at that point, interesting to see that their throws improved immensely in the next couple of years
Qing Pang/Jian Tong CHN – side-by-side double axel-triple toe sequence (Pang step out, Tong hangs on), triple twist (big), throw triple salchow (hangs on), side-by-side double axel, throw triple loop (nice), side-by-side double toe – wow, watching them ten years ago really gives you an appreciation of how much they have improved as a pair in their chemistry and just their overall skating, but really, you would never have thought that they would become World champions
Tiffany Scott/Philip Dulebohn USA – side-by-side triple toe (Dulebohn double), triple twist (underrotated, collision and poor set down), lots and lots of crossovers in this program, throw triple toe (fall), throw triple salchow (fall), side-by-side double axel-double toe sequence (Scott steps out of axel, Dulebohn singles axel)
PREVIOUS: Pairs’ short program
NEXT: Men’s short program
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