(March 24, 2004)

It was an outstanding night of skating during the Men’s short program at the 2004 International Skating Union (ISU) World Figure Skating Championships.

Last year’s World Champion Evgeni Plushenko delivered a solid performance, complete with a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination and a triple Axel, to finish in first-place after the short program.

Plushenko’s marks reflected his strong skate, ranging from 5.7 to 5.9 for technical merit and from 5.8 to 5.9 for presentation.

Canadian Men’s Champion Emanuel Sandhu, who was tied for first-place with Plushenko after the qualifying round, doubled his planned quadruple toe loop combination and fell on his triple Axel, and found himself in 11th after the short program.

Sandhu, 23, who did complete a solid triple Lutz near the end of his program, will now look forward to tomorrow’s free skate and aim to repeat the outstanding free skate that propelled him to his third Canadian Men’s title in Edmonton in January.

“I’ll focus on the long program and try to have a good practice (Wednesday),” said Sandhu. “I put down a good qualifying round and I wanted to put down a good short program and I didn’t do that, but that’s sport.”

Edmonton’s Ben Ferreira will also look to repeat his free program from the 2004 BMO Financial Group Canadian Championships in January that brought the hometown crowd to its feet.

Ferreira, 24, also had a problem with his combination in the short program, turning a scheduled quadruple toe loop combination into a triple toe loop-double toe-loop combination. Ferreira did come back to complete all the other required elements in the program, including a strong triple Axel.

Ferreira currently stands in 15th-place.

Placing second after the short program was Brian Joubert of France, and standing in third-place is German Stefan Lindemann.

In tomorrow’s free skate, Ferreira will skate in the middle of the second group, while Sandhu has drawn to skate last in the second last group.