- Joined
- Aug 27, 2003
The more I think about the more I am sure V&T are the biggest lock of all, although I will be very surprised if any of V&T, Team Canada, or Kim dont win gold for that matter. They have been pulling away from the pack more and more all year, and S&S who were neck and neck with them for so long, are now fighting to even stay ahead of all the other teams. Their only rivals are a team not from a strong federation who are seen as sliding down (S&S). They also will be in enemy territory in Russia and nobody will come to their defense unfortunately even if the Russians made some huge mistakes, and S&S given their history arent likely to go clean anyway. The next biggest threats are either #2 Russian team who politically are behind V&T in their own countries support (along with being much weaker and more inconsistent skaters) or a Canadian team, and given the Canada-Russia history in skating they find themselves even deeper entrenched in enemy territory and wont be beating the Russians in Russia unless something catastrophic happens. The judges will be sure to give V&T the GOEs and PCS needed to win no matter what, even to compensate for several mistakes if need be.
You may be right about this. However, I'm not sure we should count S&S out just yet. True, this season was very subpar. I don't know what happened, beyond the obvious problem of Aliona's sinus infection. But I'm guessing it was a motivation problem. They've been pretty honest that they stayed in this quad entirely for Sochi. Robin even said at one point that it didn't really matter if they competed in Europeans or even Worlds, since they already have so many of those titles. I got the sense all year they were just sort of riding out this season, weren't really focused on it, and were just waiting for next year and Sochi. I think it will be a different story next year. They definitely want that gold in Sochi, and I think they'll be much more motivated and will skate much better--if they can stay injury- and illness-free. They definitely have the skills and talent to come back strong next year. Despite the lackluster season, they are still clearly better than everyone except V/T (maybe not in the long at Worlds, but overall). It will take some of their best performances to beat V/T, but I don't think it's impossible. Although V/T had a great Worlds, the rest of their season was not great at all. I think they're beatable.
The whole situation reminds me of Klimova/Ponomarenko and the Duchesnays in 1992. Coming off 1991 Worlds, no one gave K/P much chance of winning the Olympics in 1992. Everyone expected the Duchesnays to win the OGM because they were a) coming in as world champions and b) skating in their home country. In fact K/P were not even considered locks for silver, as they were fighting off a home-country challenge from Usova/Zhulin, seen as splitting support within the Russian federation. But in the end, K/P triumphed with skating that was so good it simply could not be denied. I do think S/S have a chance to do the same.