U.S. Skaters Dominate Kwan’s Exotic New Routine Impresses Judges, Boosts American Women To Sweep Of Top Spots

Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge won the singles titles Saturday in Skate America, the season’s first major international event.

Kwan of Torrance, Calif., Tonia Kwiatkowski of Cleveland and Sydne Vogel of Anchorage, Alaska, gave the United States a clean sweep of all three medals in the women’s division.

Kwan won with the routine she has named “Taj Mahal,” after the fabled Indian palace a king built for his queen.

“I’m an Indian woman and I’m telling her story,” Kwan said. “There’s romance and sadness.”

“My routines are totally different from last year,” Kwan said. “There’s a new me out there. They’re very exotic.”

Eldredge won the men’s division, landing eight triple jumps in his 4-1/2-minute program.

Eldredge, who won the world title last March, performed to the music from the movie “Independence Day.” The 25-year-old from Chatham, Mass., received scores of 5.9 - one-tenth of a point from perfection - from eight of nine judges.

“Things could have been better,” he said. “Things went really well, but there’s always room for improvement. I’d like to get a quad jump in sometime.”

Eldredge edged out Alaxei Urmanov, who won the Olympic gold medal in 1994.

“I didn’t watch Alaxei skate,” Eldredge said. “But I heard the marks ‘five-point-eight’ so I knew he’d done well.”

Urmanov finished second.

Former U.S. champion Scott Davis recovered well after falling on his opening jump and spinning face down on the ice. Davis finished seventh in the field of 12.

“I knew coming here I wasn’t going to set the world on fire,” said Davis. “How I skate depends on my confidence level. I’m trying to build it up.”

Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev from Russia won the pairs event. U.S. champions Jenni Meno and Todd Sand and former world champions Evgenia Shiskova and Vadim Naumov did not compete because of injuries.

Kazakova and Dmitriev, the current European champions, gained a narrow decision to win Saturday’s long program division.

That was enough to advance them ahead of the Americans Shelby Lyons and Brian Wells, who had soundly beaten them in Thursday’s initial program. Lyons and Wells finished second and teammates Stephanie Stiegler and John Zimmerman were third.

Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, a couple from Moscow who have trained for the past two years at the University of Delaware, claimed the ice dancing gold.