Evan Lysacek 2nd, Jeremy Abbott 1st, Johnny Weir 3rd, Ryan Bradley 4th
After yesterday's championship free skate, I'm so pumped for the US team heading to Vancouver. We're sending the reigning World Champion, and three men who have each won two National titles. They've also shown they can deliver under pressure.
I'm especially proud of Jeremy Abbott. I'm going to bring brownies into work tomorrow so my colleagues can experience the joy of watching that free skate. He did a quad toe as if it took no effort, and then completed 8 triples. Each move just flowed into into each the other seamlessly. No long and thought out set ups into the jump elements, just strong edgework and flow through out. Watching it was like a warm, chewy brownie that makes you go "mmm...." It was that good! Total beat down on the other skaters. The crowd got on their feet while he was still in his last spin. Go Jeremy!
Evan Lysacek shed his basic black and feathers for a steel-gray tone. He threw in his quad toe for good measure and was bit short on the rotation and went down. Otherwise, he skated like the World Champ he is, with increased difficulty from the Grand Prix events. He shrugged off missing gaining the National title back with peaking in Vancouver in mind. He was glad to get some practice of doing a quad in a pressure-filled competition.
Johnny Weir skated around in a new costume that included fur and that was the highlight of his skate. His short program kept him on the Olympic team and got him a bronze medal. He skated this program better at the NHK Trophy, but I think he's never capitalized on COP in this freeskate. It doesn't help when he skates tentatively with this program.
I felt a little debate would have been deserved during the selection committee meeting making the Olympic and World Team picks between Johnny and Ryan Bradley. Ryan laid down a challenge with his free skate and two quad program at the beginning of the last group. He's been inconsistent in the short all season, and often does a quad but then botches his triples. Johnny always seems a bit more interested in Johnny which leads to some inconsistency as well. I think the committee could have debated who might be challenged to give the skate of their life by getting the honor of skating in Vancouver. I think Ryan would have, but Johnny's got the Olympic experience to begin with. OpEd off.
NBC did an OK job with the broadcast. Both Icenetwork and NBC had been promoting the same schedule that Icenetwork would show the first few groups and that NBC would show the final two. Unfortunately, NBC only showed the last group and also requested a moratorium on tweets and other reports during the penultimate group. So no one saw that group which is kinda silly. I'm sure people would easily switch from Icenetwork to TV and perhaps a bit more excitement would be brought into the broadcast.
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