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Leaders not the people's choice

Inoue and Baldwin in first place but Nam, Leftheris win crowd

Jeff Bunch  •  Staff writer
Published January 25, 2007

(Dan Pelle The Spokesman-Review )

Two teams earned their personal-best marks Wednesday night in the Senior Pairs short program at the 2006 U.S. Figure Skating Championships at the Spokane Arena, but one set of marks drew boos from the crowd.

Defending champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin scored 62.73 with a program that admittedly had a couple of flaws. Meanwhile, training teammates Naomi Nari Nam and Themi Leftheris had a clean program, but trail by a narrow margin entering Friday afternoon's free skate.

"Johnny and Rena are awesome, they're a huge inspiration for us every day training with them," said Leftheris. "I think we're just as happy for them as we are for ourselves."

The Spokane crowd voiced its disagreement with the lower marks of 62.29 for Nam and Leftheris. Baldwin had a lift that didn't go perfectly and his partner stepped out of the landing on a throw triple axel.

Leftheris said that's the third time an audience has booed their marks and called it "affirmation."

But Inoue and Baldwin weren't apologizing for their marks, which were better than the ones they received while placing seventh at the 2006 Olympics.

"It wasn't better than the Olympics," admitted Baldwin of their performance. "But I think we were rewarded more in that second mark because it's a year later and we're just that more further along in our careers. So, that was nice to see."

"There was a little shaky part here or there maybe, but pretty textbook," Inoue said.

The pair said they accomplished the one thing they wanted on this night.

"Our goal was to come off the ice happy and we did," said Baldwin. "We left a couple of points on the table. I had a couple struggles, which is uncharacteristic."

At 33, Baldwin is the oldest skater at nationals. Inoue, his wife, is 30 and overcame lung cancer before returning to the ice in 1999.

They met later that year and are competing in their seventh nationals. They were also champions in 2004 and placed second in 2005.

In 1999, Nam was second in nationals at age 13 as a singles skater. She had a hip injury in the 2000-01 season that kept her out of competitive skating. She and Leftheris teamed up in 2005 and were fifth last year in their first nationals.

"You train the whole year for this competition – it's our favorite competition – and you come out and want to skate your best," said Nam. "We really, I think, enjoyed ourselves out there."

She then broke down when describing exactly how much it meant for her, personally, to be enjoying herself after overcoming adversity.

"I enjoy and I appreciate the sport a lot more. I think it's very rare for people to understand that, especially skaters who've been skating their whole life," said Nam. "I mean, to be able to come back … you just appreciate it so much more."

Brooke Castile and Benjamin Okolski (59.77) are third, just ahead of Tiffany Vise and Derek Trent (58.44) after challenging programs.