Gold number three! Biathlon! But Felix Lock shockingly didn't win, and didn't even medal (another German grabbed the bronze that way). Other than that, let's talk figure skating:
There's a Eurosport Player commercial running at the moment, which reminds me how I mad I was that Eurosport Player chacked TLC for a huge part of the morning. If I had known that, I wouldn't have closed the frozen TLC screen I still had open when TLC showed the slopestyle finals. Boo-hoo! Now I have to rewatch it again at some point for the commentary.
So, Team SD. It all felt soooo similar, I was so glad when that Portuguese song started Bobrova and Soloviev's SD. The Shibs scored fewer points than expected. Tessa and Scott were hot, but I don't like that costume on her. I'm pretty sure the "real" costume will have its appearance for the individual SD.
Ladies: Medvedeva was STUNNING. World record! That combination as the first jump in the second half was outstanding with the arm aloft on the Flip and both arms for the 3T. Wow.
Carolina Kostner and Celine gave me goosebumps and then brought me to tears. Very happy she was second. Oh, and Dabin CHoi and "Papa Can You Hear Me" was just beautiful. Lovely music, lovely skate.
I was disappointed by the lack of skaters in the booths. While it's still better to have coaches and staff sit there instead of having an empty booth, it's sad that some skaters had such little support from their team mates. I understand that the pairs teams that prepared for the LP weren't present, but where was everyone else?
CAN, OAR, ITA, JPN and USA advanced to the LP. Where Marchei and Hotarek nailed the skate of a lifetime. Wonderful performance, so playful, and except for the not-so-synchronized sbs spins, all looked very well. I loved their screams when the music was over and how Valentina burst into tears sobbingly when they left the ice. So emotional!
I rolled my eyes at Duhamel/Radford for changing their LP to their 2015/2016 LP "Hometown Glory." It's a great song, it was a good skate. But they didn't even create a new LP for the season because they wanted to go back to that wonderful program they won their first world title with. Turns out you can't replicate that, so you switch to the next program you became world champion with? What? Side note: Daniel Weiss commented that they ditched the program that had been created for them especially for the Olympics because they felt more comfortable doing this program. Do your research, man.
I know everyone said Russia (excuse me, OAR) was already throwing away the gold medal by sending Zabiiako and Enbert (WTF indeed), and since the Italians did so well, OAR actually lost two points to Canada. Suddenly Italy has a shot at a medal ...
And then I see the starting orders for tomorrow and go even more WTF. I know you get to change up to two entries for the LP, but I really have no idea what to make of these particular changes and the strategies involved. The funny part might be that the teams all made those changes under wrong assumptions since they didn't know what the other teams would do.
What I would have expected that actually did happen: Daleman for Osmond, Zagitova for Medvedeva. They're somehow evenly matched compared to their chances in the field, it makes sense.
What I could have imagined that didn't happen: USA having Chock and Bates skate the FD. They beat both the Shibs and Hubbell Donohue in the FD at the GPF and Nationals, so they may be the best bet for winning the FD over the Russians and the Italians. Not that the Shibs couldn't do that, but Bobrova/Soloviev had a really strong showing of their FD at Euros, and the U.S. would want to have Russia between themselves and Italy by all means.
The other somewhat unexpected changes: Nagasu for Tennell, Sakamoto for Miyahara (kinda makes sense considered her proneness for receiving underrotations) --> that only leaves Carolina Kostner unaltered; Rippon for Chen and Tanaka for Uno. That's causing the biggest confusion in my head. What's behind this? Don't they want to send their best to have a shot at the bronze? Is it the skaters that don't want to perform again? Do they want to give more skaters the chance to get accustomed to the competitions and don't really care what comes out of it?
I'm totally confused because The only thing I can say for sure is that Zagitova will win, and that the dancers (who had no changes) will probably finish in the exact same order as in the SD.