I'm not great at "reporting" but I'll try to post some comments about my experiences at Finlandia over the weekend. Hopefully others will too? I know I'm not the only GS poster attending...
Anyway, here I am in Finland. Weather is not as wet as forecasts suggested, so far at least. I considered trying to blag my way into the practices today, despite being told by the organisers that they were not open to the public. But I didn't bother in the end, did a bit of shopping then did a lot of eating, drinking, and watching Poland JGP instead.
Went to the draw this evening. Got worried and a little disappointed because not many skaters were there at first... but they arrived in droves after a short while, via shuttle buses. So it was well-attended after all, although there were still some absentees (eg. most Russians, I think only Stolbova/Klimov and Leonova were there).
As always, it's wonderful to see the skaters interacting with each other, and getting along so well.
The organisers didn't do the usual "pull a number from the bag" draw... instead, the skaters had to pick from a bunch of "goody bags" on a table - each bag had a different number inside (along with the "goodies") on a folded piece of paper...
A few snapshots from the draw:
Yuna Shiraiwa and "hot coach" Yamato
Kevin Reynolds
Gabby Daleman
Boyangman
More tomorrow. Maybe. It looks like it will be a loooong day...
Anyway, here I am in Finland. Weather is not as wet as forecasts suggested, so far at least. I considered trying to blag my way into the practices today, despite being told by the organisers that they were not open to the public. But I didn't bother in the end, did a bit of shopping then did a lot of eating, drinking, and watching Poland JGP instead.
Went to the draw this evening. Got worried and a little disappointed because not many skaters were there at first... but they arrived in droves after a short while, via shuttle buses. So it was well-attended after all, although there were still some absentees (eg. most Russians, I think only Stolbova/Klimov and Leonova were there).
As always, it's wonderful to see the skaters interacting with each other, and getting along so well.
The organisers didn't do the usual "pull a number from the bag" draw... instead, the skaters had to pick from a bunch of "goody bags" on a table - each bag had a different number inside (along with the "goodies") on a folded piece of paper...
A few snapshots from the draw:
Yuna Shiraiwa and "hot coach" Yamato
Kevin Reynolds
Gabby Daleman
Boyangman
More tomorrow. Maybe. It looks like it will be a loooong day...