Anabelle Langlois and Cody Hay lead the Canadian figure skating championships after the short program yesterday. Former world silver medalists Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison are in second place; she fell on a triple salchow. Meagan Duhamel and Craig Buntin lie in third, although the top three are only separated by 3.09. I still predict Dube and Davison get one of the Olympic spots.
In the completely unsurprising news category, Patrick Chan leads the men's field with a 90.14 despite putting a hand down on his triple flip and doubling the toe loop on his attempted triple/triple combination. To put Chan's scores in perspective, consider that Jeremy Abbott got a personal best score of 87.85, but he did not make any errors. And he had a triple/triple. And that was still a very high score. Does it really help Patrick to have his marks ridiculously inflated? Who knows. Here is what it said in the Canadian Press:
It's almost a given that marks are boosted at any national championships - Evgeni Plushenko raised some eyebrows of his own at the Russian event when his scores were sky-high despite some significant mishaps.
"For sure, I'll be honest, I think it was a bit like Plushenko, and I'm sure the other skaters are shaking their heads thinking the same thing," Chan said. "But points don't mean much to me, it's more how I felt going out and how I skated."
Points do, however, mean kind of a lot...to the competition. We'll see if Chan can clean things up in the free skate. For full scores, here is Skate Canada's site.