Wow. The caller was brutal on the flutzes in the champ events. No "e", just called them a flip. Also dinged people for "saving" a jump with a pseudo-loop, negating true loop combos. I've never seen so many --- in adult singles.

I hope lovepairs is ok - what happened?

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"The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary." -- Vidal Sasson

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." -- Unknown

Just got home from LP and had a great time.
8th in Bronze Ladies Free final and 4th in Interp 4
I have read this forum for the past year and after seeing the friends I made last year in Chicago I thought I would join in.
I meet Herniated in the 32 rink and I told you what my user name would be.
Kristen and Robin- It was great seeing you again. Bobsled Babes, You are toooo funny.
Farrah - Thanks for the light up toy you threw after my Bronze 4 final.
Anne - Thanks for your support
Maureen and Heather - Thank you for being my "coach" during the Interp.
For all the poeple who threw toys for my Interp 4 Group B;(I was the Music Box Doll)
Megan from DE
Robin - for the towel
Erin from Wagon WheelErica from USFSA -LP
Skating jumpsecrets.com
Rob L from Ga. for the little ducky.
This was the first time I had toys thrown on the ice for me.
Thank You,Thank You,Thank You.

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[b]Freesk8er
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I heard from one of the other pairs that during the 20 minute WU, she fell out of a lift and landed on her tailbone, and had to be sent to the ER.

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Hi everyone! I've been sleeping all day after getting home very late last night!

ANs was AMAZING this year! Even though I didn't medal (8th in Silver I and 7th in Ladies A/D I) I skated quite well and had so much fun! It was great meeting everyone from here. Vesprholly and I had a beautiful chat and enjoyed watching the events together. Jazzpants and I finally connected at an event after missing each other at 2 previously! Mel on Ice, Flyingcamel, and everyone else I met were absolutely wonderful! The arena was beautiful and skating on the 1980 rink was an amazing experience. I met a ton of people and really enjoyed the whole experience. Congrats to everyone! I can't wait til next year!

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"Without a struggle, there can be no progress" ~ Frederick Douglass

I'm just back from AN2008 and had a fantastic time and my best finishes ever!Thanks DebbieS for the congrats on making final round in Silver4, I was thrilled to be there. And I WON the Artistic Interp with a brand new program - I was stunned! I love the blue vase! And then to top it off, the judges gave me a Silver medal for my Light Entertainment Interp, and I had a grand old time in the final round of my free. I have never had to compete all four days - I'm exhausted.
I loved hanging around with all of the great people. Joanne, you were great in your music box routine and freestyle - 2 medals, you go girl!
Syracuse people were fun as always, as were Becca and her southern crew. And I made a bunch of new friends. You are all wonderful skaters!

Andrea and Lee took a hard fall on the 20-minute warmup (the practice given ~2 hours before each event). They were doing a press-type lift, and it looked to me like he caught an edge (the ice was not very good and felt "slanted" and uneven in some parts, and there were 9 pair teams on one warmup ). Andrea took a full-force fall straight down to the ice, landing on her back/tailbone (as I saw it). And sadly, it took the paramedics almost 10 minutes to come to her aid (um, where was the ice monitor during this session who would have been available to call for help with the walkie-talkie?). Thank goodness a few adult skaters have medical training! I also heard that the medical team from Saranac Hospital arrived *before* the Lake Placid venue team.

(Apparently, as her partner reported, Andrea has a compression and hairline fracture on two vertebrae, but thankfully, does not need surgery. We're all wishing her a speedy recovery.)

There was no ice cut originally planned for the championship pair event, which came directly after the championship master men event. Shortly after this accident, it was announced that there would indeed be an ice cut. Glad to know that it takes a horrible accident to get clean ice for an event where people are doing overhead lifts.

Not only that, but the USA rink was unused and completely available during the pairs 20-minute warmup, the one where 9 teams were scheduled to skate on. Furthermore, the dancers were granted more than one warmup session, (and on the 1980 rink, the surface where the competition was being held--this was not the case for most, if not all, of the pair events).

Couple all this with the late night practice sessions/early morning competition times really infuriates me, and I hope we can successfully lobby for some changes from USFSA. Or at least make them realize how all of these incidents points to a lack of respect/understanding for adult pair skating and the risks involved.

"Serious" adult pair skating has grown in the past few years, and maybe the organizers need to look at how the discipline has changed. To wit, the last time adult pair skating was held in Lake Placid in 2004, there were only 2 tracks, adult (now, bronze and silver) and masters (now, gold and masters). Only one master team and only one or two adult pair teams were attempting overhead lifts. Contrast that with today, where all of the lifts attempted by the top 6 teams in champ. pairs were full lifts with 2+ rotations. What a sea change.

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Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
"Do what you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life."
-Haha, I've *arrived*! I am listed as a reference on Wikipedia.

Oh, how awful! It's good that she doesn't need surgery, but what a terrible thing to go through. I hope she isn't in too much pain and that she recovers quickly! I hope Lee is OK, too.

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Terri C is a Bronze lady!
Gold Moves, here I come!

You skaters who compete at the US Adult Nationals need to get some flower kids picking up those stuffies. But where are you going to get them from? At least we Canadian adult skaters have the StarSkaters (kids who are competing at the Senior Bronze [Juvenile] to Gold [Junior] level) who compete either before we do or like this year after we do if we would think of asking them. If only they would come into town early so they could be our flower kids. I'm sure many of us adult skaters wouldn't mind being their flower people. LOL

Are you sure your fans didn't rob a Toy "R" US? Man, you had a lot of lute there Rob! How long did it take you to get all of it off of the ice?

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"It's not age that determines but the heart." "Skating is not just a sport for the young but it's a passion for the soul of the young at heart." Brigitte Laskowski

I am a nomadic adult skater who is a member of Windsor FSC (Skate Windsor) WOS SC again since Sept. 1st, 2008.

http://eastcastlemusic.tripod.com

Singerskates Sports Music Editing

I am finally back home and can finally post again!!! (Trip back home was fine! No lost luggage and I actually got back a half hour early!!!)

First thing, I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to all you guys out there at AN for the support and welcoming me into the AN fold!!! You guys are a FUN bunch and I'm happy to have finally met most of you!!! (There are a couple of people I wanted to meet but couldn't this time around. You know who you are and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet you.)

I had fun and it was a very rewarding experience in my skating life!!! I learned a lot about adult competitions at the Nationals level.

I was quite happy that I pretty much skated a clean program for my technical. I didn't expect to medal and was very pleasantly surprised to have come 15th out of 18 in my QR.

Admitted, I was a bit disappointed about my interp, not necessarily b/c of the placement, but b/c I have very little to go on what I have to do to improve my placements. I know... it's an interp!!! It's very subjective. But when it's almost unanimous that your program was the worst of the bunch, you kinda have to wonder whether you did something really bad. I suspected that part of the problem was that I was in the wrong interp group (i.e. I should have been in A/D instead of LE/C.) However, despite that I've made a lot of progress since I passed my Bronze FS tests, I know that I still have a LOT more work to do with my overall skating skills too to become better.)

I'm gonna keep this short, since I JUST got home and am VERY jet lagged right now. I'll post more when I recover from my vacation!!!

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

It was a fun AN!

Eventhough I didn't skate ( I did Sunday before you all arrived), I managed to lose 4 pounds from all the running I did over the four days. Sprinting up and down the stairs plus the long halls, you sure burn up the calories.

It was fun to meet new people plus run into some old friends.

Good job one and all!

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Keeping School Figures Alive!!

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!

Thanks.

Rob

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Geriatric Figure Skating Crew - President for Life!
Georgia Figure Skating Club - President (again)
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"I'm too old to die young, and too smart to be happy" - Kinky Friedman, The Mile High Club

2010 Adult Nationals - earning a gold - "Priceless"
2009 Adult Nationals - competing with a cold is not much fun.
2008 Adult Nationals - Too little sleep, too much vodka!

They did have sweepers for most events. However my skate was late, and I think it was past their bedtimes.

Yeah, I have some great friends (and partner) that like to reward me with goodies. It took a few minutes, luckily I was the last skater in my event. At one point I had to just start sliding them towards the door.

For Stephen (Nova Sk8r) in Championship Pairs we through a live critter on the ice. We dressed Becca in a shirt that looked like Wendy's teddy bears and put a large tag on her that said "Sk8 Gr8" and slid her on the ice. And, she was holding nips. While Stephen liked it, I'm not sure his partner did.

Rob

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Geriatric Figure Skating Crew - President for Life!
Georgia Figure Skating Club - President (again)
Facebook
____________________________________________
"I'm too old to die young, and too smart to be happy" - Kinky Friedman, The Mile High Club

2010 Adult Nationals - earning a gold - "Priceless"
2009 Adult Nationals - competing with a cold is not much fun.
2008 Adult Nationals - Too little sleep, too much vodka!

My event video is up on IceNetwork! If anyone wants to watch...Silver Men III I am #5. I wish the camel was better but overall was pleased with my Silver Medal performance.

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Why are you skating so slowly? Get out of my way!

If you skate faster, it makes everything look better!

Too funny! I must admit that David & I lucked out like that too in the first competition we ever did. By some bizarre twist of fate, our sbs camels were in perfect unison. I made sure to buy from the photographer and borrow from our friends ALL the pics I could find of those beautiful spins. You'd never know by looking at them that we had nothing but botched, out of synch spins after that for the next 2 years!

I guess the coast is clear: Congrats to all our skaters, regardless of how you placed! We'll always be proud of you for working so hard to reach the AN's.

Consolation to those who were injured. Hope you heal quickly and without complications.

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Love it Rob!!!

From NoVa: "Only one master team and only one or two adult pair teams were attempting overhead lifts. Contrast that with today, where all of the lifts attempted by the top 6 teams in champ. pairs were full lifts with 2+ rotations. What a sea change."

Nova - actually there have been several pairs doing overhead lifts since the begining in adult and masters. At the first Nats we had overhead lifts in adult pairs as well as masters and there were 8 adult teams. In '99 in masters pairs my partner and I had a platter-star and again in 2000. There were several in our flight of 8 masters pairs who did the overheads then, and in addition there were about 5 adult teams, but most of that group has not been competing in the last few years. What's more 'serious' is the attention from the USFSA. At any rate, we should all have reasonably clean ice. We can all fall on anything, but rutted ice does not help! No one wants to see anyone fall from an overhead.

freesk8ter - congrats! What age group?

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Recycle Love - Adopt a homeless pet

I don't disagree with you on your points of ice cuts for pairs, and some other points, but this one i have to address:

You don't HAVE to do those late-night practice sessions if you're competing early the next day. You CHOOSE to. The rink can only schedule so much, and if that's where the practice ice fits, it is what it is. But if any pairs team (or dance, or singles) thinks it's too hard to do a late-night practice and an early morning event, then you have the choice to NOT do the practice.

Andrea fell, and obviously that's terrible. However, that WU was smack in the middle of the day . . . optimal time for Pairs, as I have understood from all those who complain about Pairs being scheduled too early or too late. So it was an unfortunate accident, yes, but you can hardly blame the time of day for it, nor did any of the other items you listed have anything to do with it. They had a bad entry on a lift. It happens.

(and no, I wasn't there, but have several friends in Pairs who all were there and said the ice was fine. It was a bad lift entry. Happens to the Olympic Champs too.)

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Rogue Element, Inc

I got home from ANs last night after a nice, long 13 hour drive (including a 1-hour wait in Sarnia to get back into the US) and I'm still coming down from a fabulous week!

I skated a clean freestyle program and got 3rd in Bronze I ladies! My only goal for that program was to stand up on my lutz (I'd fallen on it in the last 2 ANs), which I did, so getting a medal was just icing on the cake!

I also skated in Interp I ladies Artistic/Dramatic, but had a hard time waking up my body up and didn't skate it quite as well as I would have liked. I finished in 6th place, so I was satisfied with that.

It was really nice meeting/seeing you all again and hopefully I'll see you in Grand Rapids next year (if we win the bid)!

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I've got mad salchow disease!

I was merely pointing out several problems with the schedules and not necessarily that A had to do with D. It's just a grievances list that may also include adding why ice dancers snuck on a few *pairs only* sessions and why that was allowed when it was pointed out to the monitor.

Um, yeah, you most certainly were not there. As *I* was skating on that ice, I can testify that it was awful, unless you are used to skating in Rockefeller Center in June. In fact, the top 2 pair guys and I discussed how bad the ice was right after the session (you know, the 2 guys who have competed in senior pairs). Tara and I stayed on the ice a few minutes after most of the other pair teams left the rink to do a, gasp, lift (Craig J. was nice and stayed to watch us to make sure we were not alone--nice, huh? ). As we got off the ice, some of the maintenance crew went out there to check and fix the unevenness of the surface.

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Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.
"Do what you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life."
-Haha, I've *arrived*! I am listed as a reference on Wikipedia.

That's fine, but the Pairs I spoke with said it was fine. To each his own. Some people are fine practicing on very bad ice, other people can only skate on perfect ice. So it is about your personal comfort level.

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"It's just a grievances list that may also include adding why ice dancers snuck on a few *pairs only* sessions and why that was allowed when it was pointed out to the monitor."

Nova - you're right, the dancers should not have been there. As for the reason - probably the same reason a pair team was sneaking in pairs practice on freestyle only ice at one nats. No consideration for anyone other than themselves.

I did note that the ice was not great on some of the practices - primarily skipping cuts to make up for time. I'd rather run late and have good ice, but it's not up to me. However, it is up to me to determine if the given conditions meet my needs, and if not adjust accordingly.

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Recycle Love - Adopt a homeless pet

On a different topic......I just counted 11 men who withdrew from the competition from Bronze and Silver singles events alone. Was this from injury or the fact that the events were placed on WEDNESDAY? Is this a normal number of WD's? It seems high to me.

Back to the Ice and Monitors etc at Nats... I think there are some valid points that should be brought to the attention of the LOC and maybe to the Adult committee.

I know that I bassically had to take over for the monitor during the first flight of Championship Gold Men. I think there were many other people who had similar experiences. I do plan on taking some of these issues to the LOC.

Even with all the rain etc. I did have a great time even though my event was very early in the week and nobody saw it!

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Why are you skating so slowly? Get out of my way!

If you skate faster, it makes everything look better!

I think I saw that too! (bebi: did you fall over the wall trying to slip a nip? All I remembered was seeing you on the front seat blowing the horn and then the next minute over the wall and on the ice and NoVa making off with the nips w/o helping you up! )

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

Unfortunately that happens. And unless the monitor is very savvy (and sometimes they aren't, they are parents of a local skater just helping out) there's only so much that can be done. The adults do have to police themselves to some extent, and some adults will sneak in an extra practice at all costs.

(Personally I NEVER do practice ice at ANs, ever. Haven't done it for about 8 years. I find that if i don't know something coming into ANs, no last-minute practice is going to suddenly make that element appear! Plus I've had enough experiences with some adults being overly-aggressive on practice ice, yelling for people to move, get out of the way, etc, that it's more aggrivation than I need. I've managed to compete just fine without extra ice.)

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Wish I could say my AN experience was better. I've been working so hard the past year and I dropped in the standings. Not anyone's fault but my own, I got swingy on my sal/loop and then rushed the entrance in my camel/back sit/scratch at the end. My placement was a disappointment for sure.

What really irritated me was that I let a BUILDING intimidate me - you could see it in my face in my opening pose, as I was facing a huge American flag and the sign that said "1980 Rink - Herb Brooks Arena". The only thing I remember thinking was "oh $#!*" And I skated terrified. I did buy two pictures from that event, as I was startled at how vulnerable I looked - but I do look rather sweet in one of them.

I skated better for interp, but the placement was a big letdown compared to how well I placed at Mids. Half of the panel liked it, the other half hated it. Still, it was flattering to have so many people approaching me after the event to say how much they loved my skate, the energy and the character. I was getting positive vibes from audience members from the moment I stepped off the ice to people "woo hooing" me at the afterparty at Roomers. I guess I'm heading in the right direction.

As for what building blocks I need to work on for next year, I need to find them. I have the heart for it, but frankly, that heart is pretty broken at the moment. I feel the need to lick my wounds, cry, fling skates (luckily, I'm about to take them to get sharpened instead), rest up and not think about skating for a while. At the same time, I cheered myself up by flipping through songs on the iPod on the trip back to find fun music to play with and figure out edits for them. Maybe I'm too stupid or stubborn to quit.

I there were plenty of fun moments, like the artesian glass place in Canada (oh! oh! oh!), seeing Rob's pairs partner skate an interp as him, finally meeting the Cookie Guy, skating at least once on all 3 surfaces, seeing all the Olympic sites, cheering for the judges, cheering for my WMAS friends, cheering for my skating forum and CAS friends. The competitor's party was a riot, as usual. And I kept my promise to jazzpants, from way back in 2004, and presented her with a bottle of champagne after her interp. YOU DID IT JOANNA!

And even though I don't have a medal, I did get something to cherish. I was with my friend Leslie at her practice ice. A woman was there without her coach and I volunteered to watch her do a runthrough of her program from the boards. She skated it beautifully, and I said so, and watched her run through a few other elements. I ran into her the next day,and she presented me with a glass pendant she made embedded with a wire bracket. It was her way of thanking me for caring enough to befriend her just when she needed me. That's an award I can be proud of.

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Champagne in 2005, 2008, 2009 - who's next out of the pre-bronze club...?

Wang chung!