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Today saw Michael Weiss' first appearance in Salt Lake City and he was actually present for both practice sessions today.

The first of these sessions began at 1:10 pm in the Steiner rink and was a free skate practice. Prior to his run-through, Todd went through all the jumps and managed to land a quad on the third attempt. The run-through itself was not quite as stellar as yesterday's, but still was not a bad effort at all. He began with a solo triple axel rather than the planned triple axel/triple toe, did a triple flip/double toe, and then the solo triple lutz. The quad attempt resulted in a fall-out, but he then rallied to land a triple axel/triple toe, but then popped the loop, actually managed to land a nice triple sal and then ended the program with a triple toe to give himself a total jump count of seven triples and an almost quad. Weiss looked rather sluggish overall and like he really didn't want to be there. He landed a quad/triple toe at one point, but also botched a number of triple axels and triple lutzes - he didn't attempt anything close to a complete run-through.

The afternoon session began at 5:00 pm and was a short program practice in the Delta Center. Todd landed a nice triple axel and an equally nice quad within about 6 minutes of taking the ice, and although his music was the first to play, he did a complete run-through that not only was flawless, but which also contained a quad/double toe rather than the expected triple flip/triple toe. I rather expect that now that he knows he is skating last, he is probably reconsidering the decision to stick with the flip/toe regardless. I expect he will wait to see how he feels during warmup and take into consideration how the other guys skated as well (considering that all of his major competitors will have skated by then). He completed what was a very good session with a few more quads, as well as a triple axel/triple toe and a triple lutz/triple toe. Meanwhile, Weiss began what promised to be a complete run-through but stopped when he tripled the opening quad. He did not have a particularly good session. Matt Savoie, on the other hand, looked fairly good overall, although he did pop the triple axel during his run-through. As for the remaining competitors, the Chinese (especially Chengjiang Li) continue to look good, the Japanese continue to have serious jump problems and Sandhu and Ferreira continue to look fairly good, with a few falls and misfires here and there.

The men regroup tomorrow and practice in their starting order groups. Which means of course that Todd will be skating in the last group, which is scheduled to take the ice at Steiner at 1:30 pm. The men's short program competition begins tomorrow night at 7 pm Mountain Standard Time (9 pm on the East Coast), with Todd scheduled to take the ice at approximately 9:42 pm (11:42 on the East Coast). It might be a while before I am able to return to my room to file a report, but Mary and I will be calling Christie with the results as soon as we can get to/turn on a cell phone <g>.