Skating Updates

Ryan Bradley wishes you a Merry Christmas!

 Merry belated Christmas and any other holidays that any of you have been celebrating!

There hasn't been a whole lot of skating news going around this holiday season (aside from various countries nationals), but there has been a few items of note.

Jeremy Barrett proposed to Amanda Evora on Christmas Eve. While I'm not particularly in love with either of their respective pair teams, I'm really happy for them - I do have a bit of a soft spot for Amanda ever since I saw her reaction to being put on the Olympic team. Congratulations to the happy couple!

Marie-France Dubriel and Patrice Lauzon celebrated the birth of their first child, also on Christmas Eve!

Yu-Na Kim's management is demanding an apology from a Japanese tv crew for filming Yu-Na's training without permission. Here is Universal Sports take on the situation. Honestly, I find the whole thing rather ridiculous. If Yu-Na is in decent shape by the time Worlds comes around, she'll certainly be in the mix for a medal, so why even bother spying on her?

Miki Ando won the ladies title at Japanese Nationals in a convincing fashion, finishing with 202.34 points, while short program leader Mao Asada won the silver medal with a total of 193.69 points overall. Kanako Murakami finished in third with 187.52 points and Akiko Suzuki fourth with 175.96 points. Congratulations to Miki on her first National title in quite awhile and to Mao for fighting back after a dismal Grand Prix season.

Miki, Mao,and Kanako have been selected for the Japanese World team, while Akiko will be competing in place of Kanako at 4 Continents. My one regret for the ladies? That Akiko isn't on the World team. The three girls selected probably do have a better shot of medaling there than she does, but it's still a shame after seeing her consistently underscored on program components throughout this season, despite the fact that she is easily one of the more expressive ladies currently competing. Well, c'est la vie I suppose. On the brightside, Akiko has stated that she is planning on competing next season, so there is still hope yet!

As many others have stated (though I'm not sure it can be stated enough), Japan needs more than 3 spots for Worlds in singles!