Kwan, Eldredge Only Shining Stars

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. —  World champions Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge skated like world champions Saturday at Skate America and almost everyone else skated like, well, everyone else.

Kwan, of Torrance, and Eldredge, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., were so dominant that each won their long programs with first-place votes from all nine judges. If they were looking for serious competition in the first major figure skating competition of the season, they would have had to challenge each other.

On this particular day, Eldredge, a three-time national champion, would have had the advantage. Skating to music from the movie “Independence Day,” he landed eight triple jumps, two in combination, and earned 5.9s on a scale of 6.0 from eight judges for both technical merit and presentation. Russian Alexei Urmanov, the 1994 Olympic champion, finished second.

Kwan was not so much in command, appearing more deliberate while skating to a demanding new program called “Taj Mahjal.” But she did land six of the seven triples jumps she planned, including three in a frenetic final 40 seconds. She led a U.S. sweep as Tonia Kwiatkowski finished second and Sydne Vogel third.

It was a winning day for the United States, which also won silver and bronze medals in pairs, but not necessarily for figure skating. The afternoon and evening crowds of 2,202 and 3,462 combined would not have filled the 7,200-seat Springfield Civic Center.

One woman, Russia’s Maria Butyrskaya, finished her long program a full five seconds before her music ended. Another, France’s Vanessa Gusmeroli, crossed herself on her approach to a triple Lutz and still failed to land it. A technician punched the wrong button and shut off the music while U.S. pairs team Stephanie Stiegler and John Zimmerman were still skating. And the competition ran an hour behind schedule, finishing near midnight.

The incident during the pairs long program Saturday afternoon was bizarre, reminding longtime observers of the days when records accompanying the performances would break. This was the day the music died for Stiegler and Zimmerman, who were 40 seconds from the end of their 4 1/2-minute program when they suddenly found themselves skating to the sounds of silence.

They remarkably finished their program to a standing ovation.

“I think everyone thought they were doing an elaborate bow,” said Peter Oppegard, their coach at the Ice Castle International training center in Lake Arrowhead.

Given the option of skating the entire program again or picking up from where the music ended, they chose the latter and finished third.

The favored Russian team of Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev won the pairs competition. The U.S. team of Shelby Lyons and Brian Wells was second, leading him to speculate that they might improve on the bronze medal from last season’s national championships. But on the verge of overtaking them are Stiegler, 16, and Zimmerman, 22, who are starting their second season together. They earned first-place votes from three judges for their long program despite the interruption.

“Just to handle that kind of pressure makes me feel confident about what they can do when they start going to higher and higher levels of competition,” Oppegard said.