What a day! I can't believe how many things I have to tell you. It is so amazing seeing all these people in person that you've admired from afar! The Target Center is a beautiful new building that will host this great event well, I believe. Also, Minneapolis has done a good job getting the city ready. There are banners down all the main streets, billboards all over with skating themes and more. There is also a thing called the Ice Plaza that will be a temperature controlled outdoor ice rink where many free public events will be taking place. Including local skaters performing, live music, public skating and skate rental, food and best of all, appearances by some great skaters including Katia Gordeeva, Kurt Browning, Rudy Galindo, most all of the US team and many Olympic medalists! I am so excited to go! This doesn't start until Monday though.

Here are my rambling thoughts of the day! I arrived when the doors opened at the Target Center this morning and saw a few men skate including Stephen Cousins who is coached by Dough Leigh (Elvis' coach). I recognized them both right away! I must say that Elvis is the only Doug Leigh skater who can do a descent Triple Axel. All the others just throw their bodies around, not up! Stephen was very nice and signed my book! There was a great skater from Luxembourg (Patrick Schmit) there who looks a lot like Derrick Delmore (USA) He was very appealing to watch and had a great sense of drama. I got his autograph too. One thing I noticed is that all the skaters sign their name and their country. Gilberto Viadana from Italy was my favorite of that group. He skated to a beautiful Piazzolla Tango with some big, strong jumps. He was the first to "perform" for the crowd not just practice! I was really excited by his great presentation. Hopefully he'll get on TV this year!!

So far both of the Mexican skaters I have seen have been far below the level of all the other skaters. It also appears as though they have very little funding. This makes me sad because here in the US we have so much and our skaters are taken care of very well.

I waited to see if Ilya Kulik and Alexsei Yagudin would show and they didn't so I left and went to the Parade Ice Garden where there are 2 rinks for practice all week. When I arrived the first thing I saw as I was walking to the door was Schwarz & Mueller (Germany) practicing this great lift outside! By the way this IS March in Minnesota (The Ice box of the US) but it was almost 70 degrees today. We were thrilled to say the least! (Thanks El Nino)

Schwarz & Mueller skated with a not so great pair from an unnamed country and looked beautiful. I was very impressed! Probably even more so because of how bad the other pair was! I even got my picture taken with Mirko afterwards when he was hanging out outside with his coach. He is very good looking by the way!

At these rinks you can't get autographs after the practices but a lot of the skaters were just hanging around in the lobby area and outside so I got lots of autographs including Laetitia Hubert, Laurent Tobel, Angela Derochie and many others that you wouldn't know! I got to talk to Dough Leigh outside for a while and he said Elvis still is not doing any jumps and is still in some pain. I told him to tell him that we all miss him here in Minneapolis.

None of the Russians pairs showed up which was disappointing, maybe tomorrow! There were no other pairs of note that I saw.

I saw a few ladies before I had to go to work for a few hours. They included the 2 I mentioned earlier and Anna Wenzel from Austria who I really like! She has a top 5 spiral and a beautiful style. Her music was a disastrously cut mix of Beethoven pieces, AUGH! Angela (from Canada) seemed to be having a great time she smiled a lot and had fun with her coaches. She did some great double jumps combinations from a standing position including 3 nice double loops in a row! She had gorgeous Rachmaninov music (My favorite).

I then left and came back later that evening to the Target Center to see the Ladies short program practice. In summary, I saw a few exciting skaters and a lot of mediocre skaters. There were a lot of spectators in attendance for these practices! My 2 picks for the other 2 medals in Ladies are Maria Butyrskaya and Tanja Szewczenko and they both were captivating tonight. The crowd obviously loves Tanja and she loved us back with her beautiful smile and wonderful skating. I got both these ladies autographs before anyone else. I was very lucky to get them because they got mobbed later!

Irina Slutskaya skated in a group with Maria only (Irina signed for no one). It was so evident who the superior skater is when you put then back to back like that. Irina is still pretty cloddy and Maria is beautiful and sexy especially in her Fever program. They both skated well and got in some good combinations and spins. Maria's hair is different now I can't place what it is but it looks very nice and fits her persona perfectly!

There is a skater from Poland (Anna Rechnio) who bears an amazing resemblance to Nicole Bobek with a little Oksana Baiul thrown in. Short sassy blond hair, big warm eyes and lots of make-up. She was a crowd favorite for sure and was very dramatic. Big double Axel! WOW. Look for her on TV too!

Once during the evening 2 skaters collided, not seriously though. When I watch how fast they skate I can easily see how when Oksana & Tanja crashed in Lillehamar serious injuries could result!

All the Japanese, Chinese and Korean skaters seemed similar; great jumps, and not so great presentation. I realize this is practice but you can tell!!! They also hardly ever smiled.

More on Maria... I was very impressed by her! She really seems ready to take home a medal. (Irina does not) She has the same sort of presence that Michelle has and draws you in and makes you want to watch her. Irina fell once and ended up sliding on her backside for a while and smiling to the crowd. It was cute and she is obviously having a good time!

One more note: the only US skaters that are here yet are Ina & Dungjen but I missed them! The detroit crowd is scheduled to arrive on Friday and Michelle not til Sunday (this is all rumor). The others I don't know about.

Be back tomorrow!