Olympics 98

Before Steven skated, commentator Robin Cousins said, "I'm just willing him on. I'm past being nervous for this boy! I know he knows that he can do it, we all know that he's capable of doing it here, we've seen him doing it here. Now he's just got to prove to everybody at home and to these judges down here that he's a worthy successor, and that he can compete with the big boys." Steven skated right before Canadian team mate and quad king, Elvis Stojko, and entered the rink with one of his big smiles. Although Steven was doing his triple-triple combination in practice, when he skated in the competition he decided to go for the triple-double and keep it clean. The program was very well skated, slightly better than the excellent but undermarked performance in Milan at Europeans. I think he demonstrated the best presentation of all the competitors. He really looked to be enjoying himself once he got the combination jump out the way.	1	Ilia Kulik	RUS	0.5
	2	Elvis Stojko	CAN	1.0
	3	Todd Eldredge	USA	1.5
	4	Alexei Yagudin	RUS	2.0
	5	Philippe Candeloro	FRA	2.5
	6	Steven Cousins	GBR	3.0

Robin commented "Well, he'll be very pleased with that" as Steve finished his program. In the kiss and cry, Steve mentioned to Robert Tebby that he thought he may have got caught in a rut in the ice at some point. But what did the judges think?

The British and Romanian judges had Steven in 4th and the rest placed him 5th (it was before Elvis had skated).

Steven later described his performance as "Great, just great." He said, "The judges finally gave me what I deserved."

Steven looked relaxed and confident as he came out for his long program, in spite of a warm up which included a fall on the triple axel. However, that didn't seem to be on his mind, as he skated out to the centre, Simon Reed commented that he was "lapping it up." He began with a perfect triple lutz, much better than the one at Europeans. However, this was followed up by a fall on the triple axel. It looked like he never really got his landing leg securely underneath him, and he couldn't hang on.

He recovered nicely, with a brilliant, well-centered flying sit spin, with no travel whatsoever. The salchow was up next, and he elected to play it safe with the triple rather than risk the quad. His combination spin was well-centred as well, and included a beautifully positioned camel spin. His next jump was a triple flip, and he made sure of the landing before adding a double toe at the end. He doubled his next triple axel, and got the crowd clapping along to an upbeat march, with some great footwork!

He did another triple flip and a triple (toe?) loop to finish. I think it was a loop, but it was a bad camera angle, and I couldn't tell if the foot went in or not. His final combination spin was great again. He looked happy at the end, but he said "sorry" to everyone at home as he waited for his marks with Robert Tebby and Doug Leigh. Marks for technical were a little muted, six 5.4s, one 5.5 and two 5.6s with four 5.6s and five 5.5s for presentation. He didn't move up or drop overall, but surprisingly enough, Michael Weiss moved above him on the free, but was too far behind overall to threaten Steven.

So Steven finished in 6th place, a great result for him, although he was unlucky not to have done better.

If anyone has the official final standings for the men at Nagano 98, I'd be happy to add them to the review. Send them to Cuz Web.