The Japanese women shocked figure skating fans at the Delta Center Saturday afternoon, claiming two of the three top ladies' medals at the Four Continents Championships.
Reigning Japanese national champion Fumie Suguri attacked her free skate with confidence, speed and technical proficiency to overtake short program leader Tatiana Malinina of Uzbekistan. Malinina slipped to fourth place, skating tentatively and two-footing two of her planned triple jumps.
Suguri's interpretation of Holst's "The Planets" choreographed by Michelle Kwan's choreographer Lori Nichol — was the evening's most complete package of speed, difficulty and artistry. But it didn't satisfy Suguri.
"I really wanted to do my best here," she said. "Today, my program was not 100 percent. It was maybe 80 or 90 percent. There are a lot of things for me to do before Worlds, especially the artistic part."
American Angela Nikodinov waged an impressive comeback from seventh place after the short program to claim second. Her long program, a powerful interpretation of Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty," included four triple jumps and one of skating's best layback spins.
But two mistakes at the end of the program left her medal chances very much in doubt. After turning a planned triple Lutz into a single and a triple toe loop-double toe loop combination into a double-double, Nikodinov packed her bags.
"I had my stuff packed to go back to the hotel," she said. "I thought maybe I'd gotten fourth or fifth. When I saw that I'd placed second, I thought it was a mistake. It was a big surprise. A nice surprise, but a big surprise."
In a similar situation was Japan's Yoshie Onda, the competition's bronze medalist. Competing in her first major event in the U.S., Onda wowed the Delta Center crowd with seven big triple jumps. But judges decided Onda would not win the event on jumps alone, zinging her on the artistic mark.
Still, Onda said she is pleased with her progress.
"I know without the artistic part, I can't fight at the world level," she said, translated by Suguri. "Other people want me to do more artistic part. Today, I did both the artistic and technical part."
The third of Japan's promising entries at Four Continents, Shizuka Arakawa, slipped from third place to sixth after a nervous free skate. Americans Jennifer Kirk and Amber Corwin finished fifth and seventh, respectively.
The 2001 Four Continents Championships concluded Saturday evening with the gala exhibition, featuring the top five finishers in the men's, ladies, pairs and dance competition.
4-C NOTEBOOK: Attendance for the four-day competition barely topped 39,000, including the tens of thousands of Utah schoolchildren who attended the events as part of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee's classroom to events program.
The judge's marks this week spanned the entire spectrum — from a Mexican skater who scored a painful 0.9 to a perfect 6.0 for pairs champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada.
American ice dance champion Peter Tschernyshev, a Russian native, competed his first event as an American citizen at this year's Four Continents. Tschernyshev received his American citizenship this month, which permitted him and his partner, Naomi Lang, to represent the United States at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
E-mail: jnii@desnews.com