There were some very funny things going on that day for technical levels for all the skaters. And some surprisingly low GOEs on the rhumba, based on the marks that the same teams had been getting all season, as well.
Some of it may have been due to the bad quality of the ice. I have heard, but don't know, that typically the Russians keep their ice at home on the hard side, and the ice at Nice was not uniform, and rather soft in spots. That might affect all the Russian skaters badly, and perhaps even worse than other teams; furthermore the ice was bad at Nice the last time Worlds was at Nice.
There should have been a Senior B scheduled there as a qualifier for having Worlds, perhaps, for Nice to demonstrate that they can produce a high quality ice sheet? The kids train all year, and they deserve to strut their stuff on good ice.
