THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TURIN, Italy — Two-time world champion Stephane Lambiel won the Grand Prix final men’s figure skating title Saturday, adjusting his Flamenco program after a pair of faulty jumps to edge Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi.
"I don’t do only a program, I do a show. That makes the difference I think," Lambiel said. "When I’m on the ice I want to feel the crowd getting into the program, getting into the motion. I think that, for me, makes a real figure skater."
As in the short program, American skaters Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir committed errors — both falling in the free skate — to finish third and fourth respectively.
Patrick Chan of Toronto was fifth.
"My goal going into the long was to move up in the standings," he said. "I wasn’t the happiest guy after the short but I felt I had nothing to lose in the long against these guys who were expected to win a medal."
Lambiel’s victory — he totalled 239.10 points to beat Takahashi by 0.16 — marks a comeback for the Swiss skater who claimed Olympic silver on the same ice nearly two years ago but dropped to third in the 2007 worlds.
.The eight-time Swiss champion had a shaky start on the jumps — losing points on his opening triple Axel and quad toe. But Lambiel made up for the lost quad-combination points with several improvised combinations late in the program, including a triple-triple-double.
And his Flamenco routine drew gasps from the crowd with dazzling spins — the best in the field — that were tight and fast with continually changing arm and body positions.
Takahashi, the world silver medallist, was the better jumper, completing a flawless quadruple and a strong triple Axel. But none of the more expressive elements, the spins and jumps, were deemed to be at the top level, hurting the second performance mark.
"The steps were not good," Takahashi conceded. "But I can still get this result, and this is good for me."
U.S. champion Lysacek came out strong with a quad toe-triple toe combination, but lost momentum with an under-rotated triple Axel and then sprawled on a triple salchow for an automatic one-point deduction. As he went on, Lysacek made small adjustments in his program, downgrading a combination to a triple-double and a three-jump combination to two. He won bronze with 229.78 points.
Lysacek said he had to really work hard to hold his elements.
"It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy to do all the tricks," Lysacek said. "Tonight I was maybe a little nervous or excited about doing the quad right off the bat."
Weir delivered two triple axels at the head of the program as if to vindicate himself for falling on the jump in Saturday’s short. But he seemed to run out of steam midway through the program, doubling a loop and then falling on a triple flip. Weir’s disappointment showed as he waited for the scores — 216.16.
"I was tired even as I started skating," Weir said.
.Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, skating furiously as witch and demon to Waltz Masquerade, won the ice dancing title ahead of Americans Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto, who skated to a selection from Chopin.
France’s Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder took the bronze, dancing to music from "The Piano," Jane Campion’s 1993 movie about a deaf woman. The pair incorporated sign language into their free dance.
Tessa Virtue of London, Ont., and Scott Moir of Ilderton, Ont., finished fourth.
"We were very satisfied with our free dance tonight," said Moir. "It wasn’t amazing but it’s what we hoped to accomplish. It’s something we can build on for the nationals and hopefully the worlds."
.Belbin and Agosto’s opening serpentine lift failed to earn the top marks for difficulty, lowering their base score in the free dance. They finished the competition with 164.14 points, just three-quarters of a point behind.
"It’s refreshing to see where we lost points," Tanith said, "so we can go home and say ‘we’re not going to let that happen again."’