(Untitled)

[hermionemalfoy]

The look of utter disgust on Brian Joubert's face when the modest, quiet Jeffrey Buttle stole his glory at the World Championships this weekend will go down as one of my all-time favorite skating memories.

Ahhh. It feels good. <333 Jeffrey Buttle.

And WTF? What rational person would have bothered doing a quad after Joubert left so much space?

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2

[hermionemalfoy]

... So then in the free skate, Buttle rocked and won by a couple points. Weir and Takahashi were a couple points behind him, but they had both done impressive performances. Joubert bombed to sixth place and Lambiel was not doing particularly well either. Meanwhile, the press completely ignored Buttle's lead because, to be honest, it's not unusual for him to do well in the SP. I do think they're feeling a little bit dumb now, though.

Then for the FS, the Euro champ just about died and placed 20th, 15th overall. It was a total meltdown, but there were still the other guys left. Weir skated well, if conservatively. He was obviously happy with his performance because last season was so awful for him, but I doubt the US officials were particularly confident. Lambiel went next and fell on almost every jump--it was INSANE (also at the expo it became obvious that he was just Not In Shape since he fell there too--kind of sad, but I think either he wasn't trained or he has already peaked...his triple axle has always sucked and it's been overlooked before, but now it's just unacceptable).

Takahashi, the favorite, fell a few times, but he wasn't all that much of a disaster. Weir came just a point-ish ahead of him, and so he saved the US a medal as well as the three spots they wanted (the other US guys came in 10/11, so 10+3=13 = happy US officials who now are in the uncomfortable position of sucking up to Johnny Weir(d), ahaha).

Joubert had the second-to-last performance, and after seeing how everyone else performed, he obviously thought that a clean skate with one quad and some triples (and an extremely lame-o double-single combo?? wtf maybe it was a triple-single, but it was extremely half-assed at that) would be enough to triumph. At the end of his skate, he kissed the ice and was obviously in celebration mode. Very flashy and obnoxious about his glory. He winked at the camera when the scores came up. Guhhh. Spork him.

Then Jeff skated. He apparently hadn't watched the others, but he could hear that Joubert had done well because of the crowd. He trotted out looking extremely chill compared to everyone earlier, landed eight triples, three in combinations, and did all his usual footwork/spins--the only difference was that his jumps were all insanely clean and at least a third of them were after the halfway point (aka 10% bonus). So he was thrilled and left the ice hoping he'd done enough for a medal. Joubert was making a pissy face, but I don't think he realized how screwed he was until the scores got posted. Buttle won by 14 points. He beat Joubert by 4 in the SP and 10 in the LP, and really, no one can argue with that.

So at this year's worlds, the gold and bronze went to former national champions who had terrible '07 seasons and didn't land the quad, and the silver went a bitter mcbitter Frenchman. Lesson learned: do better math, raise the quality of *all* your elements, not just the jumps, and wish that you had half the natural artistry of Buttle and Weir.

(All this stuff is on youtube, btw. I really don't like the euro commentator, though--he's a Buttle hater. Boo. I don't think he knows what artistry is.)