2003 World Figure Skating Championships

26 March

Pairs Free

Rena Inoue/John Baldwin Jr. (USA), 2003 National bronze medalists
Inoue: I haven’t been to the  World  Championships in awhile (she competed in both singles and pairs for Japan before)  I was a bit scared to go out there, I felt stiff but when they put our music on I tried to let everything go, to release everything, not to think about too much.  I missed my triple toe but other than that I think we handled the pressure pretty well. (On landing the throw triple loop)  I just wanted to do it so bad, it was kind of shaky but better than falling.  It may not have been the best quality, we know we can do better than that but it still counts.  I’m really proud of myself that I held on to it rather than just let it go.

Baldwin: I’ll leave here with just a great sense of accomplishment.  We did two great programs performance wise; it was something to be proud of.  The audience was behind us, it was an experience we won’t forget.

Sarah Abitbol/Stephane Bernadis (FRA), 2002 & 2003 European silver medalists
Bernadis: Sarah has an inflammation in her left ankle, and she was in a lot of pain. We didn’t want to withdraw from the competition, I asked her to finish the program for me. When we talked to the referee, he said we better stop, but we really wanted to finish this competition. We were not able to compete at Worlds last year. We did the full season, the only event we didn’t go to was the Cup of Russia. I think it was too much. Sarah was in pain, already at the Europeans, and she was afraid of reinjuring her foot. She needs some rest now. We have to think before we make a final decision about our future.  

Tiffany Scott/Philip Dulebohn (USA), 2003 National Champions
Scott: I think we did the best that we could have done except for the one part where I hit the wall (boards).  We train at an Olympic size rink so maybe that was it a little bit, but I was so excited that we had landed everything so I wasn’t going to slow down. (On the reaction of the audience)  That was the best, it just kept getting louder. (On the standing ovation)  That meant everything to us.

Dulebohn: I would give it a 9.8 out of a 10, the best (performance) of the season since Skate America.  (On the audience reaction)  It just made us want to skate clean even more knowing everyone was behind us.  I knew when we finished that last element everyone was going to stand up.

Kathryn Orscher/Garrett Lucash (USA), 2003 National silver medalists
Orscher:  The first US team performed very well, so that made me very nervous.  We could have done a lot better if we were not too nervous.  We definitely will work hard again.

Lucash:  We are pretty disappointed about our performance.  My focus was not quite there.  We are glad to be here and we will learn from this experience.  Hopefully, we can come back to the World Championships next year.

Eva-Maria Fitze/Rico Rex (GER), 2003 National Champions
Fitze: I am dead! It was the hardest free program for us. Rico was sick after the skate off at home (one week before Worlds), and I had to train by myself. We were lacking condition. I was angry about my fall on the (triple) Salchow.

Rex: We learned a lot. If something doesn’t work, just move on. We have to improve our unison and we want to do some extra things in order to be more competitive.

Jacinthe Lariviere/Lenny Faustino (CAN), 2003 National Champions
Lariviere:  I had trouble with my triple toe all week so I am happy that I nailed it. I tend to hold back after a mistake but tonight I did not give up and fought for it.

Faustino:  We did not get low after short program. We had (tonight) our best performance this season.

Anabelle Langlois/Patrice Archetto (CAN), 2002 Four Continents silver medalists
Langlois:  See what happens when I’m not sick or injured!  We wanted to finish the season strong and I think that is what we did.  Our down this season was at Nationals and the important thing for us was to not let Nationals keep us down.  Four Continents was a bit better, Grand Prix Final was better and this was the top, we just kept going up.  (On the next Olympics)  To be on the podium at the next Olympics there are teams that are competing against us right now that have been skating and on the podium since before we started skating together.  You have to be very consistent to actually get past those teams because if you just do it once in awhile you are not going to get ahead. Our techniques are good and now we would like to become very consistent so that there are no surprises.

Archetto: Our main goal is to be on the podium at the Olympics.  We have to go take it from competition to competition, year by year.

Qing Pang/Jian Tong (CHN), 2002 Four Continents Champions
Pang: The mistake in short (doubled toe loop) affected the side-by-side triple toe loop today as well psychologically. I lost timing in the jump.

Tong: We made a little mistake in program but tonight’s performance was the one of the best in this season. We love the atmosphere in US very much because the audience understands figure skating very well.  We always enjoy it when the crowd gets excited. That helped us to skate better.

Dorota Zagorska/Mariusz Siudek (POL), 1999 & 2000 European silver medalists
Siudek:  We did our best for this program.  It was very hard to skate because the ice was very scratchy.  All the time on the ice, I was fighting to go on my track.  We love  to do lifts.  Now we go home and prepare for the next year.

Dan Zhang/Hao Zhang (CHN), 2003 World Junior Champions
Hao Zhang: This was the last competition of the season and we are very happy to have done so well. The mistake on the side by side spin was unexpected and unfortunate. We were a bit tired. Being here, we learned a lot about presentation. Senior events are quite different from juniors. In juniors, mostly the elements count, in seniors the presentation is more important. Back home we will focus on our dance classes. But we also want to bring back the quadruple twist and do quadruple throws.

Maria Petrova/Alexei Tikhonov (RUS), 2000 World Champions
Tikhonov: We made a little mistake tonight but it was OK because the audience liked us and we skated OK. (On skating first) It is always difficult to skate first because there is a shorter warm up time.  It is better to skate 2nd or 3rd but it was OK to skate first.

Julia Obertas/Alexei Sokolov (RUS), 2003 National bronze medalists
Obertas: I think it was a good skate, we skated freely. There were just some minor mistakes.

Tatiana Totmianina/Maxim Marinin (RUS), 2002 World silver medalists
Totmianina: I don’t know, I did everything that depends on me.

Marinin: It is sad. I was hard, all through the season… Of course, the World Championship are a completely different competition. It is the most important. We were lacking confidence a bit.

Coach Oleg Vasiliev: They are disappointed.  They skated cautious, perhaps too careful.  There was one technical mistake but overall it was a good performance.

Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao (CHN), 2002 World Champions
Zhao: We had conflicting feelings during this competition. When Xue got injured, we thought about withdrawing, but then we did ok in the short program. We were unsure about how the free skating would go, because 4,30 minutes is very long. We were very, very nervous, more so than usually, although we have been to so many competitions. Then I saw that Xue nailed each element, each jump, and I got colder and colder inside. I was very excited, and it all came out at the end. It was one of the best performances.