Skate City USA!

So apparently Spokane has been labeled Skate City USA! We hosted the US Figure Skating Championships in 2007 and they came back here for 2010 - apparently they like that they sell tickets here. So since it was right before the Olympics started we decided to buy tickets for the Women's Championship or long program this last Saturday.

Mirai Nagasumi (?) squeaked into second with this lay back spiral

We watched about 20 skaters compete and although quite a few (like all but 4 maybe) fell in their routines - of course they were 4 min long and they had some ridiculously difficult jumps to give them credit! The last six were the best and unfortunately since the women didn't compete super well at the World Championship the USA only gets to send 2 women to the Olympics. The skating was great and we got to personally witness Sasha Cohen's comeback attempt - although she placed 4th and won't be performing in Vancouver.

Sasha Cohen in a triple something!

Rachel Pratt (?) She won first and will be in Vancouver!

Now one of the best things of the afternoon was that this little 9 yr old I sat next to became like my BFF after 4 hours together. She is a little skater and had event tickets so she'd been to quite a few events and bought "the book" with info on the skaters and areas to keep track of their scores and make notes just like a judge, so for each skater she'd tell me where she was from how old she was and which music she would be skating to - I didn't have the heart to tell her all that info was up on the Jumbotron! Then she would say "Wow look how many coaches she has" or during the performance speculate "Oh yeah she's going to be in first"! She was super cute and fun to sit next too and all in all we had a good time and can't wait to watch the 2010 Olympics!

My new BFF Madalyn took this pic of us!