Home fires were burning

RED DEER -- The shout came out of the stands a half-second before their music began.

"Ya-hoooooo!''

Jamie Sale had come home.

"Only in Alberta,'' said David Pelletier.

"I don't think it was my brother,'' said Sale of the only member of her family who still lives in her home town.

"It didn't sound like my brother. He's too shy. Besides, he wouldn't do that at a figure skating competition.''

Competition?

You thought the fix was in at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

That was nothin'.

It's Sale & David Pelletier versus nobody, nobody and nobody else.

Here. In Red Deer. Sale's home town.

It's the Sears Open, one of those ISU-sanctioned, made-for-television competitions open to both Olympic-eligible and ineligible skaters, and Sale & Pelletier don't need any Russian mobster or French figure skating judge to win this. And there isn't even ice dance in this deal!

But, hey, no expose.

This one wasn't about all being fair in love, war and pairs figure skating.

ALL ABOUT LOVE

This one was just about love.

Blind love in the case of the judges from Poland and Germany who gave them unheard of 6.0s as the first pair to skate in their first competition since the Olympics and turning pro.

"It was amazing,'' said Sale. "The audience was electric.

"They seemed like they felt happy just to see us no matter what we did. It was like when we stepped on the ice, they said, 'thank you.' ''

They certainly said it when they finished, exploding into an immediate standing ovation.

It wasn't because they were going to end up in first place.

"These events are more TV shows than anything,'' said Sale. "There's a lot of joking around in the dressing room before it starts than you normally see.''

Pelletier used the word competition, too, but amended himself.

"I said competition but I mean performance. I like to use the word performance now,'' he said of being a recently turned pro.

Not that the rest of this doesn't involve competition. In addition to negotiated appearance money there's $40,000, $30,000, $20,000 and $10,000 prize money.

The men's field features Olympic and four-time world champion Alexei Yagudin, former world champion (Edmonton '96) Todd Eldredge, world bronze medallist Takeshi Honda, and Canadian comer Jeffery Buttle. Not too shabby.

Yagudin sits first, Honda second and Eldredge third after the short.

The women's field features all the top American skating stars not named Michelle Kwan or Sara Hughes (Sasha Cohen, Jennifer Kirk and Angela Nikodinov) in addition to four-time European bronze medallist Viktoria Volchkova and Canada's Jennifer Robinson. Definitely off-Broadway, but ...

It's 1. Cohen, 2. Volchkova, 3. Robinson, 4. Nikodinov and 5. Kirk going into today's free-skate final.

Sale & Pelletier have but Canadian Olympic 10th-place finishers Jacinthe Lariviere and Lenny Faustino and the "pair'' of Yuka Sato and Jason Dungjen, the former being a singles skater who hooked up with Dungjen at the altar and who now skate together as pros.

Warmup was the toughest part.

We forget. Sale crashed into Russian Anton Sikharulidze in the warmup before the long program in Salt Lake City.

"We're still paranoid about that,'' said Pelletier of the experience which seems to have turned his hair, er, more blond.

"All I could think of in warmup was, 'Just don't get hit this time,' '' said Sale. "I think it's like being in a bad car accident.''

Maybe that's why they only had two other pairs involved.

She could have worn a helmet and shoulder pads and they would have loved her.

It was all love-in from the git-go.

DIDN'T WANT TO MISS THIS

Four-time world champion Kurt Browning from down the road in Caroline had no interest in being involved in a competition of any sort this year. But he didn't want to miss this.

"I promised myself that when I got to the point where I was not in the event to win the event, to not go into the events. But I couldn't say no to coming home. It's a little bit like going to a reunion,'' said Browning, who agreed to skate an exhibition before the competition last night and again prior to the long programs this afternoon.

"You reassess yourself when you go home. You want to look good.''

Browning, performing his wonderful clown routine, added a new twist to it for one performance only, pulling a 6.0 out of his baggy pants in front of the judges.

It was that kind of night.