U.S. ice dancers and the Olympics

[gkelly]

I'd love a complete list of current USA dance teams who are not Olympic eligible at this time...
Belbin and Agosto
Stiegler and Magerovsky
Matthews and Zavozin

There are probably more...
Linny

Wester and Barantsev -- apparently he has not been released by the Russian federation, thus they couldn't even compete at the fall international they were assigned to. Forget about ISU championships, much less Olympics, for this year.

Slattery and Lee, as far as I know. (He competed at the 2002 Olympics for Korea.)

[euterpe]

Finishing 5th at a GP event on their first try was a huge accomplishment for Morgan and Max, and the CoC commentator noted that they did not look like juniors at all. Sure they need to polish their FD, but so do the Grushgons, who lost to the Canadians at Skate Canada, and Faiella/Scali, who bombed at CoC.

If Tanith and Max get their citizenship in time, M/Z are a real contender for that third place. Their biggest competition is Silverstein/O'Meara, not G-R/M.

Galler-Rabinowitz/Mitchell have never done well at the GPs---in the 2004-2005 season, their best GP finish was 8th. They didn't compete at 2005 Nationals due to his shoulder surgery. As a Junior team, they never made it to the JGPF or to the Junior Worlds podium, so I don't see how they would rank ahead of the 2005 JGPF and Junior World Champion team.

[gkelly]

Here are US senior dance teams' international results and point totals so far this season. (Leaving out Belbin/Agosto because they're obviously way ahead of the rest.)

Obviously the numbers are not directly comparable because different events used different compulsory dances and different judging panels, different standards of the field as a whole (esp. JGP vs. senior events), and of course the same team may give totally different performances as different events. But it may give some sense of which teams are likely to be competitive with each other and which are on different levels.

JGP Slovakia:
3 Trina PRATT / Todd GILLES
USA
161.79 4 2 4

JGP Croatia:
2 Trina PRATT / Todd GILLES
USA
155.64 1 3 2

Nebelhorn:
4 Loren GALLER-RABINOWITZ / David MITCHELL USA
155.06 5 4 4
5 Tiffany STIEGLER / Sergey MAGEROVSKIY USA
150.04 6 5 5

Karl Schaefer:
5 Kimberley NAVARRO / Brent BOMMENTRE USA
146.06 7 5 4

Skate America:
5 Jamie SILVERSTEIN / Ryan O'MEARA
USA
155.51 6 4 5

7 Tiffany STIEGLER / Sergei MAGEROVSKI
USA
142.94 11 7 7

Skate Canada:
3 Melissa GREGORY / Denis PETUKHOV
USA
164.12 3 3 2

Cup of China:
5 Morgan MATTHEWS / Maxim ZAVOZIN
USA
157.72 6 5 5

Golden Spin:
2 Caitlin MALLORY / Brent HOLDBURG USA 152.67 2 3 2


Check here for comparisons of these teams and others against each other last summer:
http://www.ice-dance.com/events-resu...kePlacid05.htm

Check the various sectional results this weekend for the latest news.

Lots of strong teams, including some who have not been competing internationally this fall for various reasons. I would not be surprised to see one of those listed above finish out of the top 10 at Nationals -- which just means that there are more than 10 decent teams competing this year.

[euterpe]

You certainly cannot compare junior events with senior events. Matthews/Zavozin scored 169+ and 158+ at their gold-medal JGP events last season, 171+ points for the JGPF win and 187+ at Junior Worlds. The last two marks would top Gregory/Petukhov's at Skate Canada

What Pratt/Gilles scored in their JGP events is meaningless. Scores fluctuate wildly from one JGP event to another. Virtue/Moir scored 180+ in Andorra and 169+ in Montreal. The second-place finisher in Andorra was Davis/White, with 171+; the second place finisher in Montreal Bobrova/Soloviev, had just 137+ points--but made the final ahead of Pratt/Gilles.

[gkelly]

You certainly cannot compare junior events with senior events.

That's very true. Just like in the old system, medalists at Jr. Worlds would get 5.8s for performances that would likely earn low-5 scores at senior events.

[CzarinaAnya]

Gregory and Pethukov are my 3 favorites, and my second favorite's in American skating, so I'll be pulling for them in February.

I hope hope hope that B&A can make it in time! I swear they could make a tv movie out of their partnership, lol

[Dyan]

I think I was mainly refering to their true senior debut - last year's nationals. They went in as favorites for the bronze, yet only ended up finishing 5th. ...................

............Looking at their detailed scores from the free is very interesting. I can tell that Garanina is loading them with very difficult elements that they are not fully ready for. Compare them to Wing & Lowe. M&Z had a higher tech score than W&L. However, their average GoE was actually negative, with a final tech score 1 point lower than the sum of base values. W&L's tech score, OTOH, was 0.7 above base.

Thanks for clarifying Ptichka. I agree with you about their placement at Nationals last season. I also expected them to finish higher than where they ended up.

And it's also true that they have difficult elements but at the moment they don't seem to be able to handle that difficulty. Both at EWC and COC the FD had a few mistakes sprinkled throughout. At COC it seemed Morgan and Max just ran out of steam right before the end of the program. I do hope they can become more comfortable with their FD by the time they compete at Nationals; if not even if Max receives his citizenship they still won't have a shot at making the team with so many miscues.