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 Friday, December 13, 2002
Women field strongest team in years
By Dick Button
ABC Sports Online
The women's team is the best the Americans have had in a long time with Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen and Sarah Hughes. It's a very powerful lineup when you include Russian Irina Slutskaya, who is a very strong and powerful skater.
I get tired of people gossiping about Kwan dropping Frank Carroll as her coach. That's what she did, she's a big girl, it's a free world and good luck to her. Leave her alone, give her a break, let her do what she wants to.
The proof will be in the pudding. If she does well, no one can deny the fact the he worked with her for 10 years. It's the way she chooses to move on it.
Sarah Huges and Sasha Cohen are marvelous skaters and it should come down to these four women.
For the men, there are two strong Russians in Alexi Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko. The Americans have a strong team. Todd Eldrede is hindered by the fact that he doesn't have the quad. Fellow American Tim Goebel, who is coached by Carroll, is enhanced by having mutliple triples and quads. It depends on how everybody skates.
The question is who will skate flawlessly or as near it as possible and then politics will rear it's ugly head because the skaters are thought of as being close together.
It's too bad that French National champions Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis are out. It wouldn't be surprising at all if Canada's Jamie Sale and David Pelletier won. They are powerful and have a lot of impact.
In ice dance, Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France, Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy, Irina Lobacheva and Ilya Averbukh of Russia; and Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz of Canada, and Americans Naomi Lang and Peter Tcherynshev are all good.
Ice dancing positions change with the speed of a melting iceberg. But great change ocurred in the Grand Prix finals, so it will be interesting to see who will come out.
Dick Button is an ABC figure skating commentator. He won back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952.
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