Stephanie feels good among the champions
Fiona Purdon, Courier Mail
10th September 2001

AUSTRALIAN teenager Stephanie Zhang was honoured at yesterday's Exhibition of Champions by opening the prestigious second half of the figure skating finale at Boondall.

It has been a quick rise up the international skating ladder following Zhang's eye-catching eighth-placed finish in Saturday's high-calibre ladies final.

Among Zhang's victims were world No. 10 Italian Silvia Fontana, highly-ranked Russian Elena Sokolova and Sydney's 21-year-old Joanne Carter.

In a breakthrough performance Zhang drilled two triple-combination jumps to finish eighth, three places ahead of Carter who managed only two triple jumps in a safety-first performance.

Russian Irina Slutskaya registered a historic gold medal victory over American Michelle Kwan. The two are joint favourites for the Winter Olympic gold at Salt Lake City in February.

Zhang, backed by Australia's best-ever world junior championship result (12th), knows her work has only just begun.

In a week's time she will be heading to Bratislava for the Ondrej Nepela Memorial Trophy where she will be involved in a skate-off with Carter and Brisbane's Miriam Manzano for the sole Australian Winter Olympic berth.

Manzano was the surprise winner of the first selection round after upsetting Carter and Zhang in Sydney last month.

The top Australian finisher at Bratislava will then head to the International Skating Union's Winter Olympic qualifying tournament, the Golden Spin, at Zagreb in November.

The top six finishers at Zagreb will be added to the 24 skaters already selected from the world championships in Vancouver last February.

Even a week ago the talented Zhang said she never dared to dream about the Winter Olympics but she has received a confidence boost from her Goodwill Games performance.

"I'm feeling pretty damn good. I feel like I'm in a dream here.
If I can do it in this atmosphere, I can do it anywhere."

Zhang, 16, was so unprepared for her new elevated status that she and coach Belinda Trussell had not even prepared a program for yesterday's Exhibition of Champions.

Trussell had the music, Nicole Kidman's One Day I'll Fly Away from the movie Moulin Rouge edited on Saturday night and the routine was choreographed and practised for the first time yesterday morning.

Chinese-born duo Zhang and Anthony Liu, who achieved an Australian-high fourth placing in Friday night's men's competition, received some of the biggest applause from yesterday's crowd of 7200.

The Exhibition of Champions offered probably the last chance for Australians to see the likes of Kwan, Slutskyaka and pairs champions Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, of Russia, who performed a crowd-pleasing routine.

The men stole the show, firstly with triple world champion Alexei Yagudin who finally produced his best and earned a happier ending to his Australian visit after a disastrous Goodwill Games campaign which ended in bronze.

Goodwill Games silver medallist Michael Weiss, wearing silver hot pants, skated and rap-danced, performing two back flips and a headspin, to a Backstreet Boys medley.

But it was the showman, Evgeni Plushenko, Goodwill Games and world champion, who brought the house down with a daring routine to "Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones.

Plushenko, wearing a fake muscular body suit, stripped to a glittering gold g-string, flaunted on the ice, leapt into the crowd and arm-wrestled with an audience-member - and still managed show-stopping triple jumps.