since you guys behaved yourselves, here´s the translation
Tomas Verner didn´t make it to short program The first day of the World Championships and already the last one for Tomas Verner, the only Czech representative at this competition. The 18-year-old skater placed 16th in the morning qualification group, with only a one-place-gap keeping him from the SP. His score was only 0.52 lower than Zivanovic from Serbia.
The 15 top skaters from each group qualified for the short program. Verner received 96.76 points for his qualification LP, and while in the first group this wasn´t enough to advance to SP, in the second group this score would have put him in 14th place and secured him a place in SP.
This unfortunate result means that the Czech Republic will not qualify for a spot for the Olympic Games in Torino. The Czech figure skaters will have a chance to compete for a spot in an adittional autumn qualification.
Verner admitted, that he cannot blame either his health problems, or his nervousness before the performance. " The fall on 3A can happen to anyone. A person has the right to make a mistake sometimes. But what I simply don´t understand is what happened after that, with the other jumps, which I jump securely and have done so for many years," said Verner.
When replaying his jumps slow-motion, he didn´t spot any mistakes on the take-offs, but admitts that he hesistated on the landings. " I am not sure whether it is in consequence of the injury which kept me off-ice for such a long time," said the 18-year-old representant.
He has been said to be feeling fine, both physically and mentally, the slight nervousness helped him concentrate even more. He lacked only 0.52 points to continue. In the men´s category, in which 45 figure skaters were signed up to compete, only 30 qualified for SP. The skaters were divided into 2 groups for qualification, from which the top 15 qualified for SP.
To Verner, the break up into groups seemed unfair, he thought there were more leading skaters in his group. " I don´t want to complain, because right now I can only be angry with myself, but the proportion of the groups was disastrous," stated the figure skater, whose goal before the Worlds was to make it to the Free Program. The results of the second group later proved him right, he would have qualified, had he been in that group.
The most disastrous were the first two minutes of his performance, during which he lost the most points. " I lost a terrible amount of points on the jumps, at least 15, which is a lot in the new judging system, " admitts the skater, according to whom it was not possible to redeem the loss in the second half of the program.
It is Verner´s first time in the Russian city. The first skating day in the Luzhniki Palace was said to be terrible. " It was unbearably hot in ice, there was water on the surface. The hall for training was much better," stated the skater. With a group of his co-skaters, they even suggested to the organizators have the competition moved to the training hall. This did nit take place, but the commitee improved the conditions in the competition hall.
Verner will stay in Moscow until the end of the championships. He won´t be competing, but, as he said, he wouldn´t miss the long program or the exhibition. He wil also use the free time to study - his graduation exams await him shortly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The most confident performance definitely came from Swiss skater Stéphane Lambiel, who clearly overrode even Brian Joubert, the second best from the European Championships. On the other hand, the qualification performance did not go as planned for the Olympic bronze medalist Timothy Goebel, who fell twice during his attempt to return among the best and placed 9th in his group.
In the second qualification group, even though fighting health problems, Evgeni Plushenko clearly dominated. He easily beat Stefan Lindemann, the bronze medalist from the last Championships. The Russian leader placed second overall, only 1.1 points behind Lambiel. Since the marks from the qualification round are only 1/4 of the final score, his loss is minimal.
The 3-time World Champion has great problems with his back and he was thinking of withdrawing up to the last minute. In the end, he executed 8 triple jumps, without attempting a quad.
"It was hard to compete. My injured back makes breathing hard for me," said the defending champion, who only started training 2 weeks ago, due to a groin injury which had kept him off-ice for 2 weeks.
He looked very tired towards the end of his free ride. Before bowing to the audience, he bent forward and skated slowly to relax his muscles. "Due to the gap in training, he skated exceeding his current possibilities. Now, to add to it, his back hurts and in the morning, it was still unsure whether he would compete," his coach, Alexei Mishin, evaluated Plushenko´s performance.
trenér Alexej Mišin.
Due to injury, Takeshi Honda, a Japanese skater, bronze medalist from Worlds 2002 and 2003 and fourth at Olympics, was forced to withdraw.