2011 Worlds Ladies Recap Part Two: A snow princess, a faun, and Evita.

To summarize so far, the final group of the ladies free skate has gone like this:

Ando used her Morosov powers in her toe pick to zap the judges to give her first place (as well as cursing Yu-Na Kim's triple flip).





In Yu-Na Kim's free skate, she showed us an improved spiral, but a lackluster (for her standards) free skate.


And Leonova just bit her finger, put her leg up in an ugly position, and somehow made the crowd go wild.

When Alissa Csizny took the ice, we all worried that her old patterns would come back to haunt her. The opening fall on the triple lutz caused those fears to enter into reality. However, this Alissa Czisny was no longer the cautious and dejected soul that she once was. She came back to fight through the rest of her program with elegance and grace showing us a fight that had never been seen, especially at a world championship.

Now that she has gotten her jumps in order, it is imperative that Czisny takes her skating to an even higher level next season. She needs to leave the Liashenko school of telegraphing and put more transitions into her skating. She is certainly on the right track however, and hopefully missing the podium by a mere 2 points will ignite all the more that fire inside of her to come back next season even stronger.

As Czisny's programs were a wonderful vehicle for her this season, next season I want to see her branch out and give us something that will give Alissa some sass, fire, and passion. Yuka is soft-spoken and delightful, but we know deep down inside her inner Asian is a warrior and she needs to extend that same mentality to Alissa. No more ballads...bring on the spice!

Carolina Kostner has been injured all season, but has placed in the top three in every event she has entered this season. Go figure.

Her free skate "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," was sublime. However, I just wish she would've gotten into the character of the faun more. Considering that fauns look like this:

I feel that Kostner could've really improved her interpretation score with a costume that resembled this. With enough of the Kostner crack the judges are already smoking, a costume where she embraces the faun's most physical features would probably skyrocket those PCS' into the 9's.

Alas, the Faun overtook the evil merlin (Seriously, what was Leonova's theme in free skate anyway?) for the 3rd spot. There was only one more skater to go.


She was the beautiful Russian sitting in 3rd place after the short program. Ksenia Marakova, with the good looks of Viktoria Volchkova the intensity of Butyrskaya, but the splat effect of Julia Soldatova, couldn't hold through till the end. The jumps at the beginning were landed, but tight and that fall in the middle made everyone groan in horror. Channeling Evita worked for her: she made me believe she was as scandalous as Evita, which is no easy feat. You know that shimmy shake in the footwork was a booty call.

For Marakova, it was not enough for a medal, and the standings stayed the same with Miki Ando winning gold (3rd world medal), Yu-Na Kim claiming the silver (5th world medal), and Carolina Kostner (her 3rd medal) for the bronze.