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QUALIFICATIONS
FIRST GROUP
Plushenko clearly did not enjoy competing at 10:00 in the morning (first of his group). When I saw the starting order I was sooo sad!! He fell heavily on his opening quadruple toeloop and then doubled his Axel. He produced four good triples (two in combination) and fast steps but doubled two attempts at the Salchow at the end of his program. Marks: for technical merit ranged from 5.4 to 5.5 with high of three 5.7s for presentation.
Abt skating to that fantastic "Lord of the Dance program" (ok the program itself it's not so good but the way he skates at it...wow!Wonderful expression!! ) He two footed his quadruple toeloop and two footed his triple Axel/triple toeloop combination too but after that he was nearly error free: six more triples. Marks: two 5.7s for technical merit and one 5.8 for presentation. Stojko won the group with first places from four of the judges. Plushenko took second because of a majority of higher placed ordinals but two judges put Abt first!
SECOND GROUP
Chengjiang Li (CHN) Wow this chinese boy is amazing! Also Yashka (Yagudin) was surprised by him (he was in the same practice group with them)! According to other skaters he said "How many jumps those Chinese are doing in practice?! Millions!!!".
Yagudin was skating to his new Tosca program (gosh he created it in less of six weeks!) I was in first row for his QP so I watched it very intently and...well it was better then Broken Arrow but I still didn't like it. He popped his opening quadruple toeloop but then immediately recovered to land his second attempt at the quad cleanly. His program went on with seven other triples. Marks: one 5.9 and five 5.8s for technical merit and two 5.9s and four 5.8s for presentation.