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Kyla has sent in this report from Colorado Springs:

I am reporting in from Skate America. I spent the day at the arena attending all of the practice sessions. They played all of the skaters SP and then their FS. They were not given the choice of their SP a second time instead
of their FS as I have seen at previous Skate America competitions. The only ones that seemed not to like that were Yagudin's coaches - Tarasova and her male partner (sorry can't remember his name). The bad news from practice is that Todd was not there. He was the only skater missing fom any session.

I did see Ruth and John Eldredge at the arena after practice was done. I left the arena at the same time they did.

Now on to the Todd News - I will add a little about the men's practices after this. I wanted to see if I could watch the draw so I wandered down by the room in the hotel where it was being held. The doors were blocked open so I
staked out a spot and was able to watch the entire draw. Dance was first followed by Pairs, Ladies and lastly Men. While they were taking role to be sure all of the men were present, Todd came around the corner with a woman walking very fast and got to the doorway just in time to say "Here" as they called his name. He was laughing and raised up his hand as he said here. Emanual Sandhu drew to see what country would go first and the USA ended up first to draw meaing Todd was first. Unfortunately he drew FIRST to skate. After drawing he left the room saying "That was worth coming for". I wonder if he was just registering when he was called in for the draw. He did not have his name badge on yet.

The skate order for the men is:

Group1
1. Todd
2. Alexei Yagudin (RUS)
3. Tim Goebel (USA)
4. Emanuel Sandhu (CAN)
5. Trifun Zivanovic (USA0
---------
Group 2
6. Silvio Smalun (GER)
7. Roman Serov (RUS)
8. Andre Kaden (GER)
9. Yamato Tamura (JPN)
10. Vincent Restencourt (FRA)
11. Alexander Abt (RUS)

Todd did not seem very happy about his draw and I can't say I blame him. I was glad to see that Yagudin is also early - second. But he skated first in the IF at Masters and that was good luck for him!

Practice Report: Group A
Sandhu had a terrible day on his jumps. He stayed till the last minute after most of the others in his group had left working on them but without much success. I saw him and his coach sitting in the hall at the hotel after practice.
Yagudin looked winded after both his SP and especially his FS (he was holding his stomach after the FS at the side of the rink where Tarasove was sitting). He did both leaving out the jumps. His programs look very dramatic and the
footwork, etc looked good. He must have felt tight because Tarasova was rubbing his neck/shoulders before he skated his FS and looked up and seemed to be embarassed. Abt appeared ready to leave practice even before his FS played. He had already put on his warmup jacket. After his music started, he eventually took it off and skated some of his program and left immediately after. Restencourt and Serov were also in this group. I didn't spend much time watching them so nothing to report. Guo has withdrawn.

Group B:
As stated above, Todd was not present. Goebel is showing some inprovement in carriage on the ice but he has a way to
go. At times his shoulders are still rounded and his spins are not done with a straight back. His spins do appear faster to me. Frank Carroll was really working with him and spent a lot of time talking to him during practice. He
was working on quads and landed several Quad sal, Quad toe and Qyad sal combo with 3toe. Zivanovic was having trouble with the Quad and seemed disgusted with himself that he was having so much trouble with it. I didn't spend much time watching Kaden, Smalun and Tamura.

Without having seen Todd skate here yet Yagudin, Abt and Goebel seem to be the biggest competition for him. I can't wait to see him practice tomorrow. His group skates at 7:30 am.

This is just a brief report on Thursday, October 26

I've seen many excellent reports that have already been posted on the Internet so I won't repeat the results here. But I just wanted to make a few observations. It is actually quite scary to watch the top skaters sharing the same ice as skaters who score in the 3.9-4.2 range. I saw Michelle dodging a few of the Japanese skaters during her warm up. And watching lower ranked pairs skaters is just plain heart stopping some times especially during the over head lifts. I am so afraid that the guy is going to trip up and the lady will go flying into the stands.

We arrived later in the day so we weren't able to attend the men's practice session which was held at the unseemly hour of 7:30 in the morning. We did get reports from others including Laurie (SkateSand) so be sure to check out her report on her Alexei Yagudin board.

I was able to attend the end of the first ladies practice group and the entire second ladies practice group. The first thing I noticed was the great gap in ability between the top ladies and the rest of the field. They were all looking pretty off to varying degrees. I heard that Michelle had only arrived the night before because she had mid terms. The altitude is affecting everyone not just the skaters. You wonder why you're tired when you do something that normally isn't a problem and then you realize that the air is so thin. A lot of skaters arrived a week or a few days early to get acclimated. But Todd told someone during his recent teleconference that you need at least a month to get accliminated. I wonder if this is why he didn't arrive until Wednesday just as his name was called to skate first in the men's short program.

I ran into Laurie on the way out of the ladies practices and she told me that Todd looked great in his morning practices. She said he landed quads. She laughed when he attempted one quad and fell and slid across the ice in a very overdramatic fashion. He was definitely in good spirits and enjoying his return.

Fran and I seem to run into Tarasova and Alexei every time we turn around and Thursday was no exception.

We almost ran into or crashed intoTorvill & Dean at the Compulsory Dance. Yes, you read right, I attended my very first Compulory Dance! We were trying to descend the stairs to get to seats and they were cutting across the aisle. Chris hopped over the railing to get across the aisle so he could sit in the corner to watch. Since I know very little about dance, all I can assume is that the placements were basically predetermined among the top couples. I could tell by the lack of speed and quickness of the lower ranked couples why they were lower ranked. But that's about it. At least the dance was a waltz so I didn't mind listening to that over and over and over and over.... <G>

During the break between the Pairs and Ladies SP, Fran introduced me to Morry Stillwell and his wife. Morry was among the many skating fans happy to see Todd return. I noticed several people approach Todd during the course of the break to tell him that they missed him at these events and was happy that he came back.

Other celebrity skating sightings - Jill Trenary looks absolutely stunning!

There is a mural in the arena concourse of famous skaters and there is one picture of a very, very young Todd, Fran estimates he was about 15 at the time. I don't know if Todd has bothered to notice that.

The Skate America programs were printed between the time that Weiss dropped out but before Todd was officially assigned, so he isn't included. But there is a picture of him in the history of the event section. One interesting factoid is that he has won more Skate America medals than any other skater in the event's history -- 8 (5 gold, 3 bronze).

We ran into a gaggle of photographers and had a quick meal before the Pairs event There will be a lot of great photos from this event thanks to Leah Adams, Susan Russell, Rebecca Patrick and more.

Todd related stuff

Todd and his parents were seated in the stands watching the ladies practice. There to support Team USA ladies. After the USA ladies practiced, they departed. Richard and Angela watched a few of the practices of the other ladies practice group and then Angela left and Richard remained to watch the rest of the session.

Todd and his parents sat in the USFSA section to watch the Pairs and Ladies SPs. Fran found out that Ruth and John were able to watch the Masters at the hotel so they were able to see Todd's first quad.

For the record, the Corvette is silver and the Mercedes is history so Todd's car inventory remains steady at three.

I thought you all might appreciate an update on Todd's condition. Well, he did attend the Dance and Ladies finals this evening and was in a fairly upbeat mood, but he's a lot sorer than he was this morning (not surprisingly). He has a practice session tomorrow morning at 10:30 am, at which time a decision will be made as to whether or not he will in fact skate in the final tomorrow afternoon. Needless to say, Mary and I will be phoning in with a report as soon as his session is over to let everyone know how he's doing and what the verdict is.

Fran and Mary