Meno, Sand Are on Their Toes

Newlyweds no longer, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand approach their second wedding anniversary in July with a pragmatic realization:

The daily routine not only hasn’t gotten any easier, it’s getting more difficult.

Which, of course, is to be expected--even recommended--if Meno and Sand are to celebrate that anniversary with something gold, imported from Switzerland.

Meno and Sand, wife and husband and the best pairs figure skating team in the United States, have finished third in the last two World Championships, turning the mid-1990s into their own personal Bronze Age.

Bronze is nice, but after a while, bronze is boring. When’s the last time anyone bragged about buying a new Lexus with the dazzling bronze trim?

Precisely, Meno and Sand concurred shortly before they brought Irina Rodnina, the legendary Russian pairs champion, into their lives, paid her a coaching stipend and told her to crank up the degree of difficulty in their program.

“Last year at the World Championships, we were very happy to win a bronze medal,” Meno says. “But if we were going to go for something more, we had to increase the difficulty in our program. We had to add a triple-toe loop.”

Adding a third rotation to their side-by-side jumps was a proposition easier said than done. But the two pairs they are chasing--Marina Eltsova and Andrey Bushkov of Russia, Mandy Woetzel and Ingo Steuer of Germany--do the triple-toe, so the decision was made for Meno and Sand.

“I think it will be very important for us,” Sand says of the new maneuver.

“We’ve competed in four international events [using the triple-toe] and won three golds and a silver. We feel like we are definitely starting on an even playing field with everyone, technically.”

The road to Lausanne, Switzerland, site of next month’s World Championships, begins here today at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Meno and Sand, three-time defending national champions, are bidding for a fourth consecutive title as they compete in the short program this afternoon at Nashville Arena.

The long program is scheduled Friday.

Also this week, individual world champions Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge are heavily favored to eclipse their respective fields here and defend their titles in Switzerland. Women’s short and long programs will be skated Friday and Saturday, men’s Thursday and Saturday.

Meno and Sand are trying to become the first team to win four consecutive U.S. championships since Kitty and Peter Carruthers, 1981-84. Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner won five national titles from 1976 to 1980.

Meno-Sand are beginning a 12-month push they hope culminates atop the victory stand in Nagano, Japan, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. The quest is daunting. No U.S. pair has won the Olympic gold medal, with American skaters totaling only three silvers and three bronzes in pairs.

And only Babilonia-Gardner, in 1979, placed first in 74 years of World Championships.

Menno and Sand continue to train with their primary coach, John Nicks, but believe Rodnina has helped push their program to a higher level.

“It’s a really good combination,” Sand says. “Mr. Nicks used to coach Babilonia and Gardner against [Rodnina]. He says now it’s nice to be on the same side.”

How good a combination?

Meno and Sand will know in little more than a month.

“Our goal is to be on the podium at the World Championships,” Meno says. “We hope to be higher than we have in the past.”