Ladies Qualifying Groups

Group A:
1. Shizuka Arakawa
2. Michelle Kwan
3. Carolina Kostner
4. Fumie Suguri
5. Irina Slutskaya
6. Elena Liashenko
7. Sarah Meier
8. Jennifer Kirk
9. Annette Dytrt
10. Joanne Carter
11. Daria Timoshenko
12. Sara Falotico
13. Sonia Radeva
14. Diane Chen
15. Candice Didier
16. Tamar Katz
17. Fleur Maxwell
18. Karen Venhuizen
19. Roxana Luca
20. Teodora Postic
21. Laura Fernandez

Group B:
1. Sasha Cohen
2. Miki Ando
3. Julia Sebestyen
4. Joannie Rochette
5. Elena Sokolova
6. Susanna Poykio
7. Idora Hegel
8. Dan Fang
9. Jenna McCorkell
10. Andrea Kreuzer
11. Evgenia Melnik
12. Nina Bates
13. Cynthia Phaneuf
14. Elena Glebova
15. Viktoria Pavuk
16. Gintare Vostrecovaite
17. Michele Cantu
18. Ji Eun Choi
19. Ksenia Jastsenski
20. Shirene Human
21. Lina Johansson
22. Tugba Karademir


Thanks to FSU

Whee Go Freakin' Liashenko, Idora Hegel and Nina Bates!

Wow. I looked at group A and was amazed it seemed so stacked, then I looked at group B and realized it was just as competitive. Seeing all those names together really gives you a sense of how deep and tough the ladies field is going to be this year. The medals are really going to come down to the wire. This is going to be exciting.

rain said:

Wow. I looked at group A and was amazed it seemed so stacked, then I looked at group B and realized it was just as competitive. Seeing all those names together really gives you a sense of how deep and tough the ladies field is going to be this year. The medals are really going to come down to the wire. This is going to be exciting.

Click to expand...

Amen! Any of the top 6 in either group could make the podium!

It is good to see that the groups seem to be quite balanced, which isn't always the case. In years past, we have seen one group have like 4 or 5 medal contenders, with only 1 or 2 in the second group. Of course, the field is so deep this year (one could argue that this may be the deepest strongest overall Ladies field ever at a Worlds) that the odds of such an imbalance were pretty slim.

In previous seasons, I would sometimes wonder why the ISU did not divide the field into groups based on PERFORMANCE THAT SEASON UP TO THAT POINT, as opposed to using the previous year's Worlds results. It really wasn't very fair sometimes -- Group A could have LAST season's hot skaters, while group B could have the current season's hot skaters, and you'd get cases where a performance that was 3rd in group A would have been about 7th or 8th in group B. And with qualifying counting towards the final score (which I never believed it should), the difference between a podium finish or 4th place could simply be luck of the qualifying draw.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Viktoria Pavuk and Fleur Maxwell fare. I hope that both make it out of the qualifiers.

I'm especially looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Cohen and Maxwell competing together in the SPs. It will be fascinating to compare their respective ballerina styles. We'll see who has the most natural extensions.