Meissner leads skaters at Trophee

Posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 11:58 pm

World champion Kimmie Meissner will get another chance to compete against Miki Ando this week at the Trophee Bompard, the fourth event of the Grand Prix figure skating series.

Ice dancers Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski, the Bulgarian world champions, are also in the field for the competition, which starts Friday.

Meissner and Ando are expecting to again battle for a title. Ando beat Meissner at Skate America, where both were superb in the free skate.

Mao Asada, the Japanese skater with triple axels to her credit, did poorly and dropped to third at Skate America.

Meissner has also done a triple axel, but the last one in competition was at the U.S. championships in January 2005.

“We have been practicing one program with a double axel and a triple axel. I land them a lot. But I have to judge it on that day and what I really want to do,” Meissner said. “They’ve been really good.”

She said that doing the triple axel again this season is one of her goals, although she backed off at Skate America.

“I want to do both triple triples again and the (triple) axel comes right in between both of them,” Meissner said.

Another competitor is Joannie Rochette, who won Skate Canada two weeks and took fifth at the Winter Olympics — one spot better than Meissner.

Meissner won the world title in March in Calgary, Canada. The Olympic gold and bronze medalists, Shizuka Arakawa and Irina Slutskaya, skipped that event and silver medalist Sasha Cohen did poorly and took bronze.

“I was surprised myself I did that well,” said Meissner, who turned 17 last month. “I was expecting to do well but I didn’t know how well.”

Meissner said the Olympic experience prepared her for the worlds.

“I learned how to keep it together,” Meissner said. “(At the Olympics) I got nervous going into the last long. At the worlds, I got to know what it would be like at that big of a stage and helped me get myself into the right mental attitude.”

Cohen is skipping the GP circuit this season and is looking for acting parts.

The men’s event includes Brian Joubert of France, who won the 2004 European title over eventual Olympic gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko.

However, Joubert has dropped to second and third at the last two European championships and was sixth at the Olympics.

There are no Americans in the men’s event, but the pairs’ event has Skate America champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin.

They became the first couple to do a throw triple axel when they completed it at the U.S. championships, and then again in the short program at the Olympics.

Former world champions Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov are also in the competition, but Olympic silver medalists Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao have withdrawn.

The ice dance event includes Denkova and Staviski, who were fifth in Turin but took the world title over Olympic silver medalists Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto of the United States. Belbin and Agosto opened their season by finishing second at the Cup of China last week.

The top six finishers in each event qualify for the Grand Prix final in St. Petersburg, Russia, in December.

Associated Press