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First a tiny bit of Todd news - he is skating in Group 5 (with the other two American guys and the two guys from Uzbekistan), at least through Tuesday, when the men will reshuffle themselves into groups according to short program order draw (which will be held Tuesday morning at 9:30 am.)

Mary and I began our day with a trip to the Salt Lake City zoo where Mary ultimately had to extract me from the Big Feline house with a crowbar (have I mentioned I have this rather large tiger fetish <g>?) and in due course we wound up down the road at the Steiner complex and the men's practice sessions. They were of course Toddless, but since the vast majority of the other guys were there, they were not without interest. Due to the absence of Todd and Mike Weiss(natch), as well as the Uzbekistanis, Matt Savoie had both his practice sessions today with the ice all to himself. He looked very, very good indeed and seemed to be experiencing no residual triple axel problems whatsoever.

Group 1 is made up mostly of Australians and so the "star" of the group is of course Anthony Liu. He was looking rather strong today and during a run-through of his short program landed a gorgous quad/double toe and a nice solo triple axel. Group 2 consists mostly of the three Canadians (Emanuel Sandhu, Jayson Denommee and Ben Ferreira), all of whom were present for the second session today and all of whom were having jump problems - they looked quite rusty, but the week is young. Group 3 is the Chinese group and today two of the three Chinese were present (both Lis; Min Zhang was missing). Chengjiang Li was looking fairly good and at one point during the session pulled out a beautiful quad salchow/triple toe combination. He could definitely be the one to beat this week. Yunfei Li landed a nice solo quad and some nice triple lutz/triple toe combos, but I saw no sign of a triple axel from him. Group 4 consists of the three Japanese, all of whom were present this afternoon. Takeshi Honda (repeatedly announced as "Takushi") was having serious jump problems, but these paled in comparison to the jump problems of Yosuke Takeuchi. Mary and I really took to Takeuchi at Nation's Cup (his use of 13th Warrior for his freeskate music had nothing to do with this, really <g>), he's a real talent and I hope he gets stronger as the week progresses. Group 5, of course, is the American Group, and today was the Matt and nothing but Matt group.

I still expect Todd to be arriving in SLC sometime this evening, but we have no intention of waiting up for him <g>. His first practice session tomorrow is scheduled for the Steiner rink at 10:30 am. Mary and I plan to attend in any case, and if Todd is there we will of course provide a full report (ditto if he's not). He has another session scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Delta Center at 4:55 pm.

Full reports of tomorrow's activities to follow in due course.