to move up and down
Topsy turvy: Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir of USA perform during day four of the ISU World Team Trophy at Yoyogi National Gymnasium on April 14, 2013 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo: Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images)
DON’T GET IT TWISTED: Zhang Kexin of China performs in the women’s short program at the World Team Trophy figure skating competition. (Photo: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)
(Source: nationalpost.com)
OUT OF THE BLUE: Team Russia 2 performs during the free skating competition at the World Synchronized Skating Championships in Boston. (Photo: Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)
The nosebleed section: On an eventful final night of the ISU world figure skating championships, Carolina Kostner’s nose began to spring a leak just as she was being introduced to begin her free skate, fourth from the last in the program, and attempts to stem the flow — pinching the bridge of her nose as she did a lap around the ice — were only partly successful.
By the early moments of her skate, the Italian had left spatters of blood on the ice and just kept going, a gutsy performance in which she completed six triple jumps and tried a seventh in the very last movement, when she fell.
She appeared to have a mouthful of blood and her hands were stained with it when she exited for the kiss-and-cry area, and if the judges had given her a half-dozen extra points for moxie, no one would have complained. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
It wasn’t quite sex on skates, but suffice to say Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir showed a steamier side of themselves this season in the free dance they took into Saturday’s ice dancing finale at the world figure skating championships.
The 2010 Olympic champions’ performance to a suite from the opera Carmen was racy, fast, powerful and — to the naked eye — hard to fault.
And yet, it wasn’t good enough to keep from losing yet more ground to their Detroit training partners and, for all intents and purposes, their only rivals, Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White. (Photo: Dave Sandford/Getty Images)
They are the public faces of these world figure skating championships, but Thursday night, those faces consisted of flashing eyes, pasted-on smiles and gritted teeth.
The hometown Worlds of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir did not get off to much of a start, and the London-born Olympic champions’ quest for a third world title may have slipped away before they got to the two-minute mark of their short dance.
It was then that a synchronized twizzle sequence was anything but synchronized, the most glaring error of a program that left them 3.25 points behind their American training partners, Meryl Davis and Charlie White — 77.12 to 73.87 — in what amounts to a two-horse race. (Photo courtesy of Dave Sandford/Getty Images)
Kim Yu-na returned to the ice, but everyone was buzzing about Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond on Thursday, who is from Newfoundland.
Osmond landed a triple-triple combination, a triple flip and a double Axel, and never let up on the accelerator, and was rewarded with the eighth-best score recorded by a female skater this season, 64.73, the fifth personal best in as many skates by Canadians this week. (Photo: Geoff Robbins/AFP/Getty Images)
(Source: sports.nationalpost.com)
Kim Yu-na’s performances in Vancouver were so majestic it seemed unlikely anyone could ever come that close to perfection again.
“The Queen” sure wants to try.
The Olympic gold medallist returns to major competition for the first time in two years at this week’s World Figure Skating Championships, and she looked so sharp in practices Monday and Tuesday it was as if she had never been away.
“After I won the Olympics, like any other gold medallist out there, I did feel some emptiness in my heart,” Kim, speaking through a translator, said Tuesday night. “I did think about coming back for a long time. What motivated me was that skating is something I’m best at. And it’s something that I love the most, so I want to give it one more try.” (Photo: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images)
(Source: sports.nationalpost.com)
Cramping their style: Canada’s two-time world ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir lost to American rivals Meryl Davis and Charlie White for the second consecutive competition at the Four Continents championships on Sunday.
Virtue and Moir had a strong start to their sizzling “Carmen” program, but had to stop about three minutes in when Virtue felt a cramp in her leg. The Canadians were able to resume a couple of minutes later.
“I just had some cramp in my legs to deal with. I’m glad we collected ourselves and kept pushing through the program,” Virtue said. (Photo by Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images)
Our obsession with figure skating continues at the U.S. championships: Agnes Zawadzki competes in the Ladies Short Program during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
