The 2013 World Figure Skating Championships wrap up in London, Ontario today with the ice dance competition (CBC, 2:00 p.m.) an the ladies’ long program (www.cbcsports.ca, 8:00 p.m.).
Canada has a very good shot at two more medals Saturday. Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of London, Ontario are in second place in the ice dance, while Sherwood Park resident Kaetlyn Osmond is in fourth place after the women’s short program.
If you watched the championship on Friday, you would know that the quality of skating has been poor for a World Figure Skating Championship.
Patrick Chan of Ottawa was completely dreadful last night in winning the men’s competition, but came away with the gold medal. After a great start where he executed the quad, he fell on two triples, double footed another jump and seemed exhausted in the latter half of his performance. At the end of the day, Chan defended his world title.
On the pairs side, how the Germans of Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy were better than the Canadians of Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford was shocking. They only received a better grade based on the subjective artistic merit, rather than their technical ability which should be weighed more significantly by judges. However Duhamel and Radford did accomplish what they set out to do and that was to win a medal. They won bronze.
At the end of the day it was the Russian pair of Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov who won gold even though Trankov fell himself after throwing Volosozhar during one of the required elements.
It will be interesting to see if the quality of the figure skating improves a year from now at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.
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