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Practice sessions were running a bit late this afternoon, so Todd's group did not actually take the ice until 4:40 pm, later than the scheduled 4:25 start time. When Todd first appeared for the warm-up, I was temporarily distracted with trying to identify the shirt he was wearing. I just knew I'd seen it somewhere before! Finally conceding defeat in the ID department, I asked Kyla if she could help me out and Kyla hastened to inform me what I was looking at was in fact the shirt that made its debut in the now infamous Who Let the Dogs Out program at the Improv. My problem, I realized, was that I failed to recognize it alone, in other words in isolation without the pants!

By the time I'd solved this problem, Todd had landed a triple axel, a triple lutz and was working on the quad. The first attempt resulted in a triple, but the second attempt resulted in an absolute beauty!

After this he took it relatively easy as he waited for his music to come up, and it was obvious because of this that we were to be treated to a complete run-through of the 13th Warrior program - what resulted was not perfect, but it sure was a pretty good start! Noteworthy was the fact that the run-through began with a nicely executed quad. He then went on to land a triple axel/double toe (rather than the 3A/3T he'd intended), a triple lutz, a triple flip/double toe (rather than the 3F/3T he'd intended), followed in due course by a second triple axel, then a triple loop and then - are you ready for this? - a horrible splat - on guess which jump? You got it! THE TRIPLE SAL! Knew that was coming, didn't you? <g>. After he'd managed to get to his feet and resume the program he finished nicely with a strong triple toe (thrown in of course because he'd missed the previous two attempts - if he gets those expect to see a double axel here instead, assuming of course he hits both triple axels <g>.) Total tally - six triples and a quad, not too shabby, but we know he can do better, and to prove it Richard had him practice the sal a couple of times, and then had him do a triple axel/triple toe and a triple flip/triple toe.

Tim Goebel also did a complete runthrough that also consisted of six triples and a quad. He also doubled the toe of the intended 3A/3T combination, popped the solo quad sal and then fell on the quad toe. Later, in Group C, Matt Savoie didn't have a particularly good run-through. Danny Clausen and Derrick Delmore finally put in an appearance in their Group A, leaving Michael Weiss as the only man in the competition who has yet to put in an appearance on practice ice.

Todd's next scheduled practice is another free skate practice, tomorrow afternoon at 1:05 pm, again in the Fleet Center. More reports from the frontline trenches to follow in due course.