No surprises on first night of Slam of Figure Skating

There were no surprises with the names at the top of the women finishers after the first night of competition at the Grand Slam of Figure Skating.

What was more surprising was the sparseness of the crowd. Less than 2,700 attended the event.

"When I first went out there, I went, "whoa,' " said Kurt Browning, who has skated at the North Charleston Coliseum to a full house during shows in the past. "But it didn't affect me at all. We have hit this market hard and maybe we have come through here enough."

Browning, skated in a made-for-TV program taped in Charleston in April, said Friday's event will help rectify some problems the skating world has faced recently between staged shows and legitimate competitions.

Friday's Grand Slam of Skating was the first time professional and amateur skaters - terms skating officials say are now outdated - have competed against each other. Instead, skaters are now called eligible for competitions or ineligible, which skaters become when they compete in events that are not sanctioned by the International Skate Union.

"Ten years from now, there will be no need for skaters to turn professional," says Eddie Einhorn, TV advisor to the International Skating Union and the United States Figure Skating Association. Skaters welcomed the new format of competition. Friday, eight men and eight women competed with the top four advancing to tonight's event.

In the women's competition, Michelle Kwan wowed the crowd with a flawless routine to "Dante's Prayer." Rounding out the top four women are Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, Lu Chen of China and Yuka Sato of Japan. Tonight, Kwan will skate against Sato and Butyrskaya will go head-to-head with Chen, then the top two will compete for the $40,000 winner's check.

In the men's competition, Todd Eldredge was in first place, followed by Canadian Kurt Browning, and Russians Ilia Kulik and Evgeni Plushenko.

This was the first in series of 10 scheduled competitions sanctioned by the International Skating Union.

Kwan, sporting a new short hairdo, said the format, which requires skaters to have three interpretive programs and limits skaters to three jumps is interesting.

"When you are limited in the number of jumps, you have to draw more from within," Kwan said. "You have more time to expand artistically, more time to express yourself and get your point across."

Browning, who fell during his program, said the format is "something none of us have done before. These guys (the three other top finishers) are looking forward to it, but I just want to see if I can move tomorrow."

The skaters who have been eliminated from competition will perform exhibitions tonight. Also competing were Nicole Bobek, Canadian Josee Chouinard, Russian Irina Slutskaya and American Caryn Kadavy and men Scott Davis, Takeshi Honda of Japan, Ukrainian Viktor Petrenko and Eric Millot of France.