TWO Scots yesterday earned places in Britain's team for the European
Figure Skating Championships in Copenhagen next month, but despite that,
neither was deemed good enough to go to the Winter Olympics in
Lillehammer.
Stephanie Main, the 17-year-old Murrayfield skater who captured a
shock UK title 24 hours earlier at Basingstoke, was named along with
Ayrshire's John Martin for the European event in Denmark from January 18
to 23.
Martin has been runner-up for the UK title four times -- on each
occasion to Welshman Steve Cousins, who gets the Olympic vote.
The former UK champion, Charlene Von Saher, who has lived most of her
life in New York and was forced out of the Basingstoke finals through
illness, was preferred to Main for the women's figures at the Winter
Games in Norway, from February 12 to 27.
The selectors' reason for dividing the spoils is that Main deserves
some recognition after her outstanding performance, but the 19-year-old
Wimbledon-born Von Saher has far more experience and should be selected
for the more important event.
This may not satisfy Von Saher, who, until feeling sick and feverish
on Thursday night, was odds-on favourite to retain her British title and
expected to be chosen for both events. She could also point out that
Main finished a disappointing twenty-fourth in the World Junior
championships in Colorado Springs last week.
Yet the young Scot shook off jet lag -- she returned from the United
States only on Monday -- as well as the challenge of better known rivals
Natalia Gorbenko-Risk and Emma Warmington to take the British
championship in superb style.
Cousins, UK men's champion for the fifth successive year, is the only
male chosen for Lillehammer. Teams:
EUROPEAN: Men's Individual --
S Cousins (Deeside) and J Martin (Kyle
& East Kilbride). Women's Individual -- S Main (Murrayfield and
Sunderland). Pairs -- D Mednick and J Briggs (Ashfield).
OLYMPICS: Men's Individual -- Cousins. Women's Individual -- C Von
Saher (Queen's). Pairs -- No qualifiers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article