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Saturday, February 12, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
CLEVELAND -- Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman won their first pairs championship last night at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Gund Arena, giving Ina another place in American skating history.
She became only the third woman to win U.S. championships with two different partners.
Maribel Vinson won the 1928 and 1929 championships with Thornton Coolidege, then came back with George Hill and won four titles between 1933 and 1937. Melissa Militano won the 1973 championship with Mark Militano and the 1974 and 1975 championship with Johnny Johns ... who happens to coach last night's third-place team, Larisa Spielberg and Craig Joeright.
It was Ina's third national pairs championship. She won in 1997 and 1998 with Jason Dungjen. They broke up after the 1998 Olympics, when Dungjen wanted to move to the professional circuit and Ina wanted to continue in the Olympic-eligible ranks.
After the Olympics, Ina teamed up with Zimmerman, who finished third at the 1997 nationals with Stephanie Stiegler. They struggled a bit last season as they learned to work with each other, but this season they have found their groove.
In contrast to the short program, in which all the teams struggled and only Ina and Zimmerman managed to get all of their marks over 5.0, last night nearly all of the top teams skated well.
Tiffany Scott and Philip Duhlebohn, who finished second in the short program, skated first among the contenders. Performing to music from Rachmaninoff, they skated cleanly except that Scott stepped out of a throw triple salchow, and they had a bit of a rough landing on their triple twist.
They received primarily 5.4s for technical merit and 5.6s for presentation.
Ina and Zimmerman, wearing beige costumes similar in color to Scott and Duhlebohn's but skating to selections from "Phantom of the Opera," were next to skate. They performed almost flawlessly, save for Zimmerman's tiny step out on a double-toe loop.
Their scores ranged from 5.6 to 5.8 for technical merit, and they received five 5.9s for presentation. They were scored in first place by eight of the nine judges.
The brother-sister team of Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler, who had finished third in the short program despite two falls, skated poorly again and fell to fifth. That enabled Spielberg and Joeright, a Cleveland native, to move up into third place.
"The hardest part was standing there watching and knowing that our fate was out of our control," Spielberg said.
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