Clean skate
Malinina wins women's title; Berezhnaya, Sikharulidze take pairs
Posted: Saturday December 05, 1998 03:30 PM
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Malinina started with a beautiful combination of jumps and did more jumps, spins and spirals cleanly AP |
SAPPORO, Japan (AP) -- Tatyana Malinina of Uzbekistan took the
women's title, her first international victory ever, at the NHK
Trophy figure skating competition Saturday.
Also sharing victories were world champions Elena Berezhnaya and
Anton Sikharulidze of Russia, who won the pairs event, and ice
dancing winners Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France.
The men's singles competition ends with Sunday's free skating.
NHK Trophy is the sixth and last event in the International
Skating Union's Grand Prix series. Under a points-scoring system,
the series lead to the Grand Prix Final, this time in Russia in
March, two weeks before the world championships in Finland.
"I didn't expect to win," said the 25-year-old Malinina, whose
best finish in four previous tries at NHK Trophy was seventh place
last year.
"I thought my performance today was perfect, but I wouldn't
rate it 100 percent because I'm hoping to do better and better,"
said a jubilant Malinina. "I haven't done anything different this
year."
She placed a distant eighth in the Olympics in February but it
gave her confidence and motivation to continue skating, she added.
Malinina took the advantage of error-prone skating in the more
important free program by overnight leader Elena Liashenko of
Ukraine and Russian Irina Slutskaya, and vaulted ahead into the
lead and the victory.
Slutskaya, who was second overnight, won the silver medal, while
Fumie Sugiri of Japan edged Liasenko for the bronze.
Malinina, skating right after Slutskaya and Liashenko, started
with a beautiful combination of jumps and went on to do more jumps,
spins and spirals cleanly and with sureness.
In the pairs event, Olympic silver medalists Berezhnaya and
Sikharulidze held their lead to win the gold. After having already
qualified for the Grand Prix Final with two previous Grand Prix
victories, NHK Trophy was a non-points competition for them.
"As world champions, we're always under pressure to skate well
and perform well each time we're competing. But we're done a good
job," said Sikharulidze. Berezhnaya nodded in agreement.
Sikharulidze said he feels confident enough to win even if
Olympic gold medalists Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, also of
Russia, would have competed in the world championships and again at
the NHK Trophy.
"Yes, I'm sure we could have won anyway," he said.
Chinese pair Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo overcame a shaky landing
on the throw jump at the start to place second. When they did
another throw jump in a four-minute performance, Zhao made it look
as easy as throwing a ball.
With the silver medal, the Chinese pair qualified for the Grand
Prix Final.
Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, with an error-free
performance, moved from fourth to third past the American sister
and brother pair of Danielle and Steve Hartsell, the world junior
champions in 1996.
In ice dancing, Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France -
second in the world championships and Olympic bronze medalists -
won the gold, receiving scores ranging from 5.6 and 5.8 of a
possible 6.0 for technical merit and 5.8 and 5.9 for presentation.
Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh of Russia edged Margarita
Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas of Lithuania for second place.
"We worked hard for better results and we also tried something
new" to improve technical elements as well as artistic
presentation, said Anisina, a former Russian who has skated in
Paris for five years.
'Some people told us last year that our program was full of
emotion but lacked techniques," said Peizerat.
"So, we changed a lot with the point in mind ... It's a lot
faster now and has a lot more difficult moves. So I think we have a
chance to win the world title."
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