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Todd's group took the ice at the Fleet Center for their free skate practice at approximately 1:05 pm, as scheduled, although Todd (for whatever reason) didn't appear until the preliminary warmup was nearly over; however, it didn't really matter as his music wasn't scheduled to play until near the end of the session. He was wearing a new shirt, a white button up shirt with collar (it looked like a twin of the black shirt he wore for practice Tuesday morning).

Within five minutes of taking the ice he landed a gorgeous triple axel in the center of the rink - with very little preparation beforehand, and shortly thereafter he landed another beauty. Then, after landing assorted other jumps, he went to work on the quad and today it didn't come quite as easily as yesterday in that it took him six attempts (all ending in triples) before he was able to execute a gorgeous quad/double toe.

His run-through of 13th Warrior wasn't perfect, but was in a couple of ways a *huge* improvement over yesterday afternoon's run-through. The opening quad was fully rotated, but he had to put a hand down on the landing. However, from there he went on to land a gorgeous triple axel/triple toe, followed by a nice triple lutz. He doubled the toe of the intended triple flip/triple toe, but went on to land the second triple axel, followed by a triple loop and *then* by a really nice triple salchow! He then executed a triple toe (to make up for the one he missed after the flip) and concluded to a round of thunderous applause from the spectators (such as they were - we aren't exactly talking a huge crowd here <g>). This, I might add, was the first 8 triple performance (8 triples and an almost quad!) I've seen him do in long time. I might also add that when he finished he didn't look winded in the least. Totally amazing. Before the end of the session, after one or two misfires, he ended the day with one of the nicest quads I've ever seen him land.

On the Other Competitors front - Matt Savoie continues to have jump problems. Tim Goebel didn't do a complete program run-through, possibly because his music was played first and he didn't have sufficient time to warm up beforehand. However, he did manage to land a truckload of quads and quad/combos before leaving the ice early. Michael Weiss put in his first appearance at practice this afternoon. Prior to his music being played, he landed a quad (2 footed)/double toe, then did a partial runthrough when his music started. He did a nice quad/double toe, followed by a triple axel/triple toe, then he did a triple axel in which he was forced to put a hand down on the landing. He then stopped, resumed long enough to land a triple flip, stopped again, then landed a triple salchow and then a triple lutz. He didn't do much else before leaving his practice about 5 minutes early.

Todd's next practice session is a short program practice, scheduled to begin at 10:00 pm tonight at Matthews Arena. More news from the Front to follow later.