UPDATE 11/15: The ISU is expected to make their announcement on Tuesday about changes to this season's Grand Prix Final qualification process after the cancellation of Trophee Eric Bompard.

UPDATE 11/14: It's official, the announcement was made just an hour before the ladies' free skate was to begin that TEB has been cancelled. This comes after ISU and FFSG, the French skating governing body, confirmed that competition would continue a few hours before. More to come on the status of this season's Grand Prix. Stay tuned.

There is similar precedence to this cancellation in the past. The 2001 Junior Grand Prix Phoenix was cancelled two weeks after the September 11 attacks. The JGP final was held after the skaters in that competition were offered a chance to compete at a later event. That said, there are only two events left in this season's GP, whereas there were six left that season before the JGPF. And the short program has already taken place for TEB.

Peter Krick, ISU's figure skating director, suggested that the short program results be used to determine Grand Prix Final qualifiers. But an official ISU decision will be made soon.

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The first day of the 2015 Trophee Eric Bompard is in the books, but, of course, the big news of the day came a few hours later with the Paris terror attacks. TEB is in Bordeaux, which is about 350 miles southwest of Paris, so it remains to be seen whether or not competition will be affected tomorrow. CBC reports that ISU is expected to make an announcement in the morning about whether or not competition schedule changes.

In the meantime, a few thoughts about today's short programs.

Short program issues
Once again, rough short programs again for Patrick Chan and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva - but if we learned anything from Skate Canada, it's that a rocketing comeback is in the works. For Chan, it was his more trusty quad toe that dropped him to fifth in the standings. For Tuktamysheva, it was her trusty triple lutz that was the main factor, though she made mistakes on all three jumping passes.

We also saw mistakes just across the board - Daisuke Murakami, Denis Ten, Max Aaron, Gabrielle Daleman, Mae Berenice Meite, Kanako Murakami, you name them - none of them were immune to the SP errors. Maybe it was that fog that was building up in the rink like it seems to every year.

Freezing Gracie Gold's triple flip takeoff

Clean flip?
Gracie Gold posts a personal-best short program score with a clean skate that included what was called a clean-edge triple flip - a closer look says unclear edge at best - I would've called it "e" with the left view or "!" with the right view, but the technical panel generally has different shots of these jumps. Nonetheless, fantastic progress from Gold so far this season. One caveat to that point is that panels this season have been more lenient on takeoff edges that are close to clean (Ashley Wagner's lutz and Alena Leonova's lutz are examples)

Styles that work
What a crazy and log-jammed short program leaderboard for the pairs. With the exception of a strong Tatiana Volosozhar/Maxim Trankov, the next six pairs are separated by 3.43! Expect lots of movement.

View image | gettyimages.com

Speaking of which, Volosozhar/Trankov are growing into this Bollywood short program - quite a departure in style for them. It proves that you can do a dance from a different culture effectively and without being accidentally offensive. Meryl Davis/Charlie White's Bollywood short dance from a few years back is another example. Take note, skaters, you don't all have to do Phantom of the Opera - just make sure your choreographers know what they're doing.

Rocker lightning round
A few other random thoughts before we close out day 1:

The quality of the short programs here at TEB don't quite match what we've see so far this season - hoping for cleaner skates in the free.
But because the short programs were so varied, it's very likely that the standings will go haywire in the free skate.

Julia Lipnitskaia looked fantastic in the short - a great, confident skate in a season where she's having some growing pains. Her free skate is definitely the weak point, but if she can put down some good jumps, she's got podium chances for sure.
Oh yeah, and for those who hated the polarizing previous costume, she's made the change.
And so did Denis Ten.
But Chan's short program costume looks like it's getting baggier and baggier.
Enough costume talk. Day 2 coming up, hopefully.