2003 World Figure Skating Championships

27 March

Original Dance

Federica Faiella/Massimo Scali (ITA), 2003 National Champions
Faiella:  We like the rhythms for this season but for us Jazz, Latin American rhythms and rock and roll are much better.

Scali: We felt very good out there, we didn’t have any mistakes, everything was clean so we are very happy.  (On competing in the shadow of teammates Fusar-Poli/Maggaglio) It is difficult when you try to be the best, to do your best on the ice when you have someone in front of you, so now we feel a freedom and we are proud to be the best in Italy.

Megan Wing/Aaron Lowe (CAN), 2002 Four Continents bronze medalists
Wing: This venue is very comfortable for us; it feels like GM Place back home in Vancouver.  We trained for this program so hard.  We are really happy.

Lowe: We have a definite feeling of excitement.  Our training has really paid off in the last four and a half weeks.  We haven’t changed our program since Four Continents; we’ve just cleaned it up.  We want to skate well, have a great performance and set ourselves for the 2006 Olympics.

Oksana Domnina/Maxim Shabalin (RUS), 2003 World Junior Champions
Shabalin: We are very pleased with the performance, and so are our coaches. I would say that it was the best of the whole season. We were a bit nervous today, but you need to be nervous to concentrate.

Nozomi Watanabe/Akiyuki Kido (JPN), 2003 National Champions
Watanabe: (On being stopped by the referee) The masking tape under my partner’s boot came loose, we did not notice it but then the referee blew the whistle and we did not realize why, but we stopped.  We did very well, we did not let this distract us.

Kido: The referee gave us the choice to start from the end of the circular steps or to start at the beginning again.

Shae-Lynn Bourne/Victor Kraatz (CAN), 2002 World silver medalists
Bourne: It felt so great from beginning to end.  We had a slight twitch at the end in the parallel footwork on one of the twizzles, it will probably be a deduction but not too bad, nothing major, it wasn’t a huge interruption and we didn’t lose our focus. There is so much energy in the building. (Emotional feeling regarding end of eligible career)  When it is all over, it will be emotional.  Right now we are keeping our focus, to skate great that I our job this week.  We have one more event to skate tomorrow.  We are looking forward to a great free dance.  (Theme of free dance)  Finding the right way to peace is the idea of the program, it is very emotional, very dramatic.  It has been accepted everywhere we have skated it in China and at our nationals in Canada.  Hopefully the people in Washington will love it.  (Nine times at the world championships and still no gold medal)  We have to skate good tomorrow and it is possible.

Elena Grushina/Ruslan Goncharov (UKR), 2002 Winners of  3 Grand Prix events
Grushina: We did very well. The season has gone by very quickly. We have only the free dance left.

Irina Lobacheva/Ilia Averbukh (RUS), 2003 European & 2002 World Champions
Averbukh: It was difficult for us to skate. The audience knows the Canadian couple better than us and received them better. We are on “enemy ground”. Among the 14 judges on the panel, there was no Russian judge, and that made us nervous. We were happy that the audience didn’t whistle when our marks came up and we were in first.  Tomorrow is the last day of our (ISU) career. We will do our Rock’n’Roll and will try to do our best, but it will be hard without the crowd support. But we’re ready for that. (On doing the OD for the last time) Actually we’re glad that it’s over and one day nearer to the end. We’re physically and emotionally tired.

Galit Chait/Sergei Sakhnovski  (ISR), 2002 World bronze medalists
Chait: We skated well. This has been a good competition. We are happy with (our coach) Evgeni Platov We have made a lot of progress and will only get better and better.

Tatiana Navka/Roman Kostomarov (RUS), 2003 European bronze medalists
Navka: I feel very good.  I think we did very well today.  We had a little, little (problem) but it was not on one of the elements. Roman’s blade lost a little edge and it was a little shaky but it was at the beginning.  I think we did a very good job and we are happy.

Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviski (BUL), 2003 European silver medalists
Denkova: It was a good performance, and we’re very happy with the crowd reaction. There are Bulgarian flags in the crowd, and people like our dance and its style. It’s sad that we did this dance for the last time in competition, but we might use it as an exhibition program. We already have been asked for that. We would need to simplify it then, because it is too difficult for an exhibition. Maybe we’ll use this kind of style for a free dance in a couple of years, who knows.

Staviski: Like in soccer, we had our own section in the audience that cheered for us.

Isabelle Delobel/Olivier Schoenfelder (FRA), 2003 National Champions
Delobel: This has been a very good competition.  We did well in the Compulsory Dance and did well today.  We are excited about the Free Dance tomorrow.

Schoenfelder:  (On coming to Worlds for the first time as French National Champions) It’s great. We have more people taking care of us. More people are looking at us.  The judges are more focused on us.  It is good. We are happy.

Naomi Lang/Peter Tchernyshev (USA), 2002 Four Continents Champions
Lang:  I think we skated well, the crowd was amazing, they carried us through.  We had one little mistake on the straight line footwork, but it was ok.  (Since Four Continents)  We worked on several parts of the OD, we tried to make everything more difficult. I wish the season could be longer.  It’s only our third competition but we have been doing very well for what we have had.

Tchernyshev:  We tried to make the straight line footwork much harder, today there was a little slip there.

Tanith Belbin/Benjamin Agosto (USA), 2003 Four Continents silver medalists
Belbin: (On loosing feathers from the costume) It happened before, so we were kind of used to it. We spotted them right after they fall.  (On receiving a third place ordinal)

We saw that! It was almost more exciting than the final placement. I said – hey, we ha a third! That’s great. It’s just showing that if we continue to work this hard and to perform this well we can continue to open doors for ourselves. With experience, we just continue to walk through them.

Agosto: This is a program we’ve trained hard all season, and especially in the past few months.  It’s really exciting to see that people are recognizing what we are doing and recognizing that there is some difficulty in that.  Hopefully we can have a good future.