ATLANTA, Georgia, 11 January 2004 — John Baldwin and Rena Inoue claimed the first title on offer at the US Figure Skating Championships here on Friday, but Baldwin said he owed the pairs title all to his partner.
“Rena skated fantastic tonight,” said Baldwin, who doubled one triple toe loop, fell on another and mistimed his throw of Inoue on the triple Salchow and sent her sprawling. “She deserves to win ... I am the one who missed the things tonight.”
Fortunately for Baldwin and Inoue, none of the other top pairs were any better.
“You can’t expect to be perfect,” Garrett Lucash said after he and Kathryn Orscher captured second place, ahead of 2003 champions Philip Dulebohn and Tiffany Scott.
Orscher and Lucash at least stayed on their feet, although their major technical elements were flawed.
Scott and Dulebohn, skating last, struggled, Dulebohn falling on the first jump of what was expected to be a triple-double combination.
Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto won the ice dance, which was already without five-time champions Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev. They had withdrawn after the compulsory dance because of an injury to Lang.
Belbin and Agosto led every phase of the competition to claim their first national title in front of Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov. Loren Galler-Rabinowitz and David Mitchell were third.
Competition concludes with an expected showdown between seven-time champion Michelle Kwan and 19-year-old Sasha Cohen in the ladies’ competition.
Cohen’s sparkling short program put her in first place ahead of Kwan and Jennifer Kirk, whose jazzy short program to music from “Chicago” was technically demanding as well as crowd pleasing.
If the short program was anything to go by, yesterday’s men’s free skate offers less likelihood of stellar skating.
Olympic bronze medalist Timothy Goebel was 10th after the men’s short program and on Friday withdrew from the competition.
Defending champion Michael Weiss was lying fourth after botching his triple axel in the short program, which was led by relative unknown Johnny Weir, Matt Savoie and Evan Lysacek.
