Not a perfect dress rehearsal for the Olympic gold dream: After a fall in the threefold throwing flip, Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot had to settle for third place and 75.36 points in the team competition in the short program.
“I didn’t have enough speed before the throw. But we are not dissatisfied,”said Ukrainian-born Savchenko, who is the first pair runner to participate in Olympia for the fifth time. The 34-year-old traced her mistake to fatigue.
Yevgeniya Tarazova and Vladimir Morozov (Olympic athletes from Russia) placed in front of the two Oberstdorfers with 80.92 points as well as the Canadian former world champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford (76.57).
The German team ranks eighth in the team ranking and has little chance of reaching the final of the top five teams on Sunday. The front runner-up on Friday was Canada ahead of the USA and Japan.
At the beginning, Paul Fentz had also remained below his possibilities. After a flawed short program, the Berliner finished in ninth place among ten runners. The 25-year-old failed the combination of a quadruple and triple toe loop, while the sports soldier fell on triple Axel. With 66.32 points, the German champion was well below his season’s best mark of 77.64 points.
“Nothing was! I felt good and was safe in my head. But I didn’t have an ass in my pants,”Fentz said self-critically. Udo Dönsdorf, Sports Director of the German Ice-skating Union (DEU), was also dissatisfied:”Paul can do more. But under stress, he’s not always stable.”
But even the absolute top runners were stomping in rows. In front of 10,000 spectators Japan had taken the lead with Shoma Uno, who replaced Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, after the first round with 103.25 points. Second place went to Israel by Alexei Bychenko (88.49) ahead of Canada with former World Champion Patrick Chan (81.66).
The team competition, for the second time after Sochi 2014 in the Olympic program, will be continued on Sunday (10.00 a. m. local time / 2.00 p. m. CET in LIVETICKER) with the short dance of the ice dancers, the short program of the ladies and the free dance of the couples.