MCE skaters win
Gold and Silver
at Grand Prix Final

Fumie Suguri	Evgeni Plushkeno

Tatiana Totmianina & Maxim Marinin

Suguri wins Gold; Plushenko,
Totmianina & Marinin win Silver

December 13, 2003

Fumie Suguri won her first Grand Prix Final championship and Evgeni Plushenko lost for the first time in two years at the Grand Prix Final at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Russian pairs Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin finished second.

Plushenko and Totmianina and Marinin were all defending champions coming into the event.

The Grand Prix Series Final wraps up the first half of the season for skaters. After taking off the holidays. most will compete in national, European and World Championships in the first three months of 2004.

Suguri maintained her speed throughout the program, and she completed five clean triples and two triple-double combinations. Suguri cried with joy as she left the ice after her performance, perhaps knowing she had won her biggest international competition to date.

"People tell me I cry if I don’t skate well, and I skated well and I cried," she said. "Everyone thinks I’m A crying girl."

Plushenko wasn’t as emotional after his performance that left him in second place for the first time in 13 competitions.

"I did a new combination and then I forgot I had already done two combinations," Plushenko said. "That was my mistake. I feel I won. I know my place." When asked what place that was, Plushenko answered "first place."

Plushenko skated a clean program but over-exuberance about a new combination — a quad toe-double loop — might have cost him the title. He started the program with a quad toe-triple toe combination, followed by a quad toe-double loop combination. His next element, however, was another combination — a triple Axel-double toe. Plushenko received no points for the triple-double combination because it was his third in the program. He also doubled his planned triple Axel and didn’t do his triple Salchow, which was to be the final jump of his program.

"I am surprised I am second," said Plushenko, whose quadruple toe loop-double loop was the first combination of its kind in competition. "The new system for me is good usually." To tell the truth, I am not so happy with the result," Plushenko said. "I am so happy with my skate, I did a good job and hit two quads, and the new combination I think nobody has done before."

Plushenko said he didn’t do the triple Salchow because he was tired at the end of the program and thought he didn’t need it. And, he said, in the 6.0 system the third combination would have counted.

Totmianina and Marinin were second after the short program and could not overtake China’s Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao in the free skate. Totmianina and Marinin seemed to slow down at the end of their program, a possible effect of the altitude of Colorado Springs at 6,600 feet above sea level. Marinin had trouble on the second part of their jump combination. They both completed the triple toe, but he only managed a single on the
second jump, which was a planned double toe.