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Kaetlyn Osmond keeps the Canadian figure-skating team in medal contention
If Canada manages to pull off a medal Sunday in the inaugural team figure-skating event, they'll owe a big chunk of it to Olympics rookie Kaetlyn Osmond.
The 18-year-old from Newfoundland was ranked last among the 10 competitors in the women's short program portion of the event Saturday night in Sochi, because of incomplete results this season.
As a result, she skated first, most definitely the toughest spot. But in finishing fifth overall behind the big four of Yulia Lipnitskaya, Carolina Kostner, Mao Asada and American Ashley Wagner, Osmond scored six points on the sliding 10-to-one point scale used in the event, keeping the Canadians at least in touch with the leading Russians after the preliminary portion of the event.
Lipnitskaya, just 15, won the women's short program. And the Russian ice-dance pair of Ekaterina Borbova and Dmitri Soloviev finished third in their short program as Russia emerged from the preliminary phase of the competition with 37 points.
That's five more than Canada, at 32 and 10 more than the U.S., which did manage to pull itself up into third place after a disappointing effort in the men's short Thursday.
The other two countries qualifying for the finals were Japan, with 24 points and Italy, with 23.
After all the whispers earlier in the day about some possible judging shenanigans with top ice-dance pairs Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S., and Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the ice-dance short ran pretty much according to form.
The Americans won it with 75.98 points; the Canadians finished second with 72.98 points and had one big, visible mistake. Overall, the scores in the ice dance reflected the rankings, with only a couple of teams flip-flopping one position.
"We really wanted to set the bar high, as leaders of the team. We're pleased with our performance. We left some points on the table, after I had that bobble on the twizzle," Virtue told the CBC. "It's always tough when you're at the minute and a half mark and make a mistake but it's a big element, those twizzles. We haven't been missing much at home, so it's a disappointment."
In the end, that ice-dance win by the Americans was only worth one more point in the overall score, with the short programs winner getting 10 points, the second-place finishers nine.
Those points do carry over into the final round, which begins with the pairs long program Saturday night and concludes Sunday with the men's, women's and ice dance long programs to determine the medal winners.
Without Osmond's terrific effort, the Canadians would be even further behind the Russians than they already are.
