A short update with Stephane Lambiel
and his team

 

By Reut Golinsky, Tatiana Geikhman
Photos © Reut Golinsky

All the figure skating community was anxious to see this battle between two Olympic medalists, two returnees who couldn’t stand the thought of watching the Olympics at home, on TV. Skating rather early because of his current low rating, Evgeny Plushenko set a very high standard, which none of the men were later able to beat. Stephane Lambiel is currently in fifth place after the short program. Here are a few comments from him and his team about the results of the short program.

Peter Grutter:

Your comments about Stephane’s skate today.

I wish Stephane had skated better. Of course, he was very sad.

Just a technical question. After Stephane failed to add a combination jump to the quad, could he have done it later in the program, with the flip?

Yeah, he could have done that. But I never discussed it with him, because then it shows that I have doubts about his combination with the quad. And also then the quad would not have a series of steps before it. But you are right, your solution could have brought him more points.

In the planned content of the program, the triple Axel was announced. Did you really plan to do it here?

At the beginning of the season, we trained the triple Axel. But after he had a very bad fall, we stopped. We didn’t plan to do it today. Maybe we’ll add it later, maybe for the Olympics.

We saw the new long program; it is very beautiful. Thank you for advising Stephane about it.

Yeah, I think it’s a good choice, because he really feels the music, this is his thing: he really is the one who skates to the music.

The set of the jumps for the long program is a bit different from what he skated before.

Yes, he’ll have one Axel, two flips and two quads. We plan two quads and Stephane was able do that during the last two weeks. So we are quite confident. But of course, today, he should have done it [too]. The most important quad was today, now. But… this is skating.

 

Stephane Lambiel:

Was skating first in the group a bad draw or a good draw for you?

Skating first was good for me; it gave me a good feeling. Because usually you need to take off your skates, then to put them back on, and you have different feeling when you go on the ice. So I was really happy with the draw. I’m so sad, because during the warm up I did 4T-3T combination, the one I needed for the good score during the program. I’m sad, but what can I do?

In your group, there was one more program (performed by Alban Preaubert) with the same music. Did you care? What do you think about it?

Hopefully nobody recognized that this was the same music. (smiles)

One more question about your short program. You used to skate dramatic or romantic programs, but this is the first time in a long time that you make us smile. Why did you decide to do something funny?

I like to act; I like to play different things and images. It’s a new page of my book right now. This adventure is fresh for me, and I really wanted to show in my program what is going on in my life right now. There is a reason why I chose this music, and the reason is that every time I’m skating, every time I’m on the ice, even if it’s like today when I made that big mistake, I still love to be on the ice. I’m so happy that the crowd is with me. You could feel that they were enjoying, and this is very important for me. It’s important to win, but it’s also very important to enjoy your skating.

There wasn’t much crowd today. Were you upset about it? You usually need full stadiums, don’t you?

It’s not the quantity [what matters], it’s the quality.

 

And as a treat for Stephane’s fans, some exclusive news to cheer them up:

Salome Brunner (about the new long program and the costume): The long program reminds a bit of the short, I agree, but this was our goal. For people who enjoyed watching “William Tell”, they will have something more in the long. The programs may have a similar direction, but they are yet different: “William Tell’ has humor in it, and “La Traviata” is more serious, more influenced with ballet choreography.

The costume is special, very beautiful, very elegant… Hard to explain, you will see.

Oliver Honer (about the new programs for “Art on Ice”): We already chose the music for both of his programs. The first one will be more lyrical, to the song of Anastacia. And the second program will also be to live music, with David Garret; Stephane will do the new version of Vivaldi’s “Four seasons”.

We wish you best of luck tonight, Stephane!