Swiss ice skaters in 14th place
The Swiss ice skating duo, Daniel and Elaine Hugentobler, remain in 14th place in the Olympic figure skating competition in Salt Lake City.
After achieving the impressive rank in the two compulsory and the original dances (3.0, 3.0, 8.4), the brother and sister team kept their position by scoring 14.0 points in the free dance competition.
The pair from Zug presented a very challenging programme and selected Gloria Gaynor’s popular song “I will survive” to accompany their presentation.
After the event, Daniel Hugentobler said he was pleased with their ranking, even though their marks only ranged between 4.9 and 5.4 points.
“I would have liked to finish a little bit better, but I am very content with our presentation. And that’s the most important thing”, he said.
The pair, who finished ninth in the European Championship in January, based their performance on the original dance.
“Our original dance pushed us to the front. Our performance was definitely better than our presentation in Lausanne as the chosen music really suited our style,” Daniel said.
The French duo Marin Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat won the gold medal after an impressive performance and were given an overall rating of 2.0 points.
The Russian pair Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh came second and Barbara Fusa Poli and Maurizio Margaglio from Italy will return home with the bronze medal.
New scoring system
The International Skating Union announced on Monday night that it would overhaul its scoring system to limit a repeat of the judging scandal that rocked the Salt Lake City Games last week.
Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the Union said the magical 6.0 mark could soon disappear.
“It is time to find something new and this [new scoring system] would be a total revolution,” Cinquanta said.
The new system would replace the judging system with a far simpler way of grading jumps, spins, footwork and other elements based on their difficulty, which would be more similar to the way other subjective sports are scored.
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