Elene Gedevanishvili is in 6th place, not last place as originally noted here.
After the short program at the Net Skate America in Lake Placid, 19 year old Gedevanishvili is 6th in the standings behind the first place Kim Yu-Na of Korea who today set a record for points in the short program. For the record, Kim Yu-Na was beautiful and deserves to win everything and get all the flowers and teddy bears that the audience can throw at her. But Haglund is going to watch the finals tomorrow afternoon on NBC and root for Gedevanishvili.
A native of Tibilsi, Georgia, Gedevanishvili became the first Georgian skater ever to win a Junior Grand Prix at an event in Estonia during the 2005-2006 season. She’d always trained in Moscow until 2006 when she and her mother were kicked out of Russia after authorities revoked her mother’s visa. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili promptly awarded her the country’s Order of Honor. She now trains in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Gedevanishvili, as Haglund indicated, is in 6th place. She doesn’t own her triple jumps, and looks a bit like a little fire plug on skates. Not an especially elegant line either. In short, she’s not what the judges are looking for. But in today’s competition, she packed more original content and passion into her four minute skate than all the other competitors combined. Toward the end of her program she even served up an actual cabriole en arriere which beat and opened. She skates with a bolshoi heart that reminds one of the greatest -shvili ever to come out of Georgia or anywhere else. She skates on the edge of disaster the way John Misha Petkevich did almost 40 years ago. Haglund would rather watch Petkovich any day than that sniveling Johnny Weir who spends way too much time with his sports psychologist.
After the short program at the Net Skate America in Lake Placid, 19 year old Gedevanishvili is 6th in the standings behind the first place Kim Yu-Na of Korea who today set a record for points in the short program. For the record, Kim Yu-Na was beautiful and deserves to win everything and get all the flowers and teddy bears that the audience can throw at her. But Haglund is going to watch the finals tomorrow afternoon on NBC and root for Gedevanishvili.
A native of Tibilsi, Georgia, Gedevanishvili became the first Georgian skater ever to win a Junior Grand Prix at an event in Estonia during the 2005-2006 season. She’d always trained in Moscow until 2006 when she and her mother were kicked out of Russia after authorities revoked her mother’s visa. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili promptly awarded her the country’s Order of Honor. She now trains in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Gedevanishvili, as Haglund indicated, is in 6th place. She doesn’t own her triple jumps, and looks a bit like a little fire plug on skates. Not an especially elegant line either. In short, she’s not what the judges are looking for. But in today’s competition, she packed more original content and passion into her four minute skate than all the other competitors combined. Toward the end of her program she even served up an actual cabriole en arriere which beat and opened. She skates with a bolshoi heart that reminds one of the greatest -shvili ever to come out of Georgia or anywhere else. She skates on the edge of disaster the way John Misha Petkevich did almost 40 years ago. Haglund would rather watch Petkovich any day than that sniveling Johnny Weir who spends way too much time with his sports psychologist.
So, Haglund is going to root for Gedevanishvili tomorrow. It’s unlikely that we’ll see her on the medalists’ podium because of her lack of points. But sometimes the points just aren’t the point.
From Sports Illustrated.
Note: Ooops! Haglund had to considerably revise his text this morning when he discovered that the results were not as he had interpreted on the TV last night.
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