Finlandia Trophy featured return visits from two teams who last began their season there in 2011 — World silver medalists Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir and U.S. silver medalists Madison Chock & Evan Bates, who took gold and bronze at that year’s event and here caught gold and silver. The stakes for an early beginning are higher in this Olympic season — also making the opportunity to work out technical and choreographic kinks as early as possible more valuable.
1. The Numbers – With dropped levels, neither team saw outstanding marks. By comparison of other early outings, however, both couples were on par with past results: Virtue & Moir’s total of 167.87 here was not far removed from their 170.33 total at their last Senior B appearance at 2011 Finlandia Trophy — the difference coming on levels, with their PCS in both segments surpassing 2011’s — while, given a lost element in one segment, Chock & Bates’s 143.06 total compared quite favorably with their 147.79 victory at 2012 Nebelhorn Trophy. Both teams, however, are certainly in a position to improve upon their scores on the Grand Prix with a few added weeks of technical tinkering and international feedback, and, per history, are likely to do so.
2. The Programs – Virtue & Moir debuted their jazz-based short dance to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong at August’s Quebec Summer Championships, picking up extremely strong marks in both technical elements and program components. The outing here saw a few more bumps, though certain other moments reflected the additional weeks of program mileage, such as a smoother transition from the faster “Muskrat Ramble” to “Cheek to Cheek” with the team maintaining hold from the former’s dip sequence through to the latter’s break for twizzle entry. The couple also swapped out the first performance’s over-the-shoulder rotational with another from an earlier program; whether a final choice or a placeholder will be seen at Skate Canada.
Their free dance, to selections from Glazunov’s The Seasons and Scriabin’s “Piano Concerto in F sharp minor , was also beset by a few missteps, and was likely a rough draft of a program that will see far more refinement musically and choreographically as the season continues, as Virtue suggested in the post-free dance press conference. One element almost certain to be altered by Skate Canada is the second rotational lift, which was apparently substituted at nearly the last minute for another and received only a Level 1.
Finlandia marked the start of the season for Chock & Bates, with programs continuing in the general narrative-inspired approach the team first explored last season, tackling an idea of Old Hollywood in their short dance and Les Miserables in the free.
3. The Levels – Both teams missed the second and third key points in their first Finnstep sequence, resulting in Level 2s for each. However, where Chock & Bates missed only the third key point on sequence 2, Virtue & Moir made only the first, giving them an uncharacteristic second L2. The greater issue for each team’s short dance, however, came with the twizzles: a foot down early in Virtue’s second set resulted in another L2, while Chock & Bates received no credit for their element after Bates fell in the first set and skipped the second.
Virtue & Moir’s twizzle bobbles would carry into the free dance, with the team earning a L3 after Moir briefly lost an edge in the second set. In that segment, however, the major technical hits came on a Level 1 rotational lift, the result potentially of a hitch between Virtue’s entry and Moir’s rotation, and a Level 2 spin; the team also incurred an extended lift deduction on that second rotational. A stall as Chock changed positions in the curve lift, meanwhile, brought Chock & Bates a Level 2 on that element.
The lost levels for Virtue and Moir on those elements where a 4 would more likely be expected — twizzles, spin, and lift — totaled a base value loss of 5.50 points, excluding GOE, bringing their 100.64 in the segment to at least a 106.14 — much closer to a first Grand Prix outing for the team, even at this early stage; likewise, L4 twizzles in the short dance and at least one L3 Finnstep would have broken a score of 70, again in typical range. For Chock & Bates, the twizzle loss in the short dance removed a base value of 6 points from their score, which with that element would have come to at least 59.34, and 60.34 with the removal of the fall deduction, putting them in range with the Nebelhorn Trophy leaders. The team’s free dance score of 89.72 was already strong, but an improved curve lift would add an extra 1.50 points in base value.
4. The Takeaway – While marks for Virtue & Moir were uncharacteristically low as compared with their scores across this quadrennial, they came in conjunction with an equally uncharacteristic range of technical glitches and typical PCS. With cleaner efforts on the Grand Prix and continued program development, their scores should, historically, see quite a bit of growth beyond that doled out here.
For Chock & Bates, more refinement will also result in better numbers, and their PCS in each segment leads that of all American teams, outside of Meryl Davis & Charlie White, to have competed so far. The question for the team will be if the marks assigned here prove to be standard in Grand Prix competition, and if such technical bobbles, as with those presented in some of the team’s earlier outings last season, will prove an aberration, or an issue of consistency.
5. The Odds and Ends – Fan video is available of the ice dance victory ceremony, as well as of several practice sessions. Virtue & Moir will make their sixth appearance at Skate Canada International, October 25-27, while Chock & Bates begin their Grand Prix series at Cup of China, November 1-3.