Courtney King suspected her music wasn’t quite right in the Grand Prix freestyle with Idocus.  Everything seemed to come up just a bit too quickly.   “I started the double pirouette at the right spot in the music, and I was one and half rotations into it when the pirouette music was done,” she said.

It turned out that issues with a technical machine sped the music up for all the freestyles on Grand Prix night.  “It was the same for everybody,” said announcer Brian O’Connor.  “We had technical problems with the speed of the CD.  It was very unfortunate that it happened.”

O’Connor realized there was a problem with the music at the end of the evening when he put in some dance music of his own and heard the difference immediately.  But he wasn’t familiar enough with the riders’ music to notice the problem during the freestyles.

“If we’d known, we could’ve gone to a second or a third machine,” said O’Connor.  “The riders have to let us know.  Four or five riders came at the end.  This is the first time this has ever happened here.”

But difficulties with the technical equipment for musical freestyles is nothing new, and O’Connor recommended that riders always come with multiple CDs in case of trouble.

Although King was disappointed that the music wasn’t right, she was pleased to learn that the the mistakes hadn’t been hers.  “Every rider had the same thing,” she said philosophically.