Michael wins Silver at Skating Challenge!

Michael finished second in one of the strongest fields of the season Friday night, Dec. 13, at the Crest Whitestrips Figure Skating Challenge at Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Michael finished behind Evgeni Plushenko and ahead of Timothy Goebel,Takeshi Honda, Alexei Yagudin and Matt Savoie.

Michael shows off the versatility of the new Freedom blade.

Michael had a spectacular technical program. He put his hand down on the triple lutz but landed a beautiful quad toe triple toe. "The last few events have been really good," Michael said.

Michael’s second-place finish follows his gold medal performance at Trophee Lalique last month.

"Tonight there were no big gaps or anything and it all flowed after the quad and triple axel."

It’s also the second straight medal finish Michael has had since he began training with Don Laws. "Don is just so constant and consistent," Michael said. "He expects a certain amount from me and I have been practicing real consistently."

Laws was not at Friday’s competition because he was attending the Junior Grand Prix Finals in The Hague, Netherlands as an official monitoring the new ISU scoring system.

Earlier in the season, Michael was determined to get a new focus on his training and competing. "I wanted so badly to be back to competing like I’ve done before. I wanted to push these guys like in the past."

Michael had a lukewarm warmup, or, as he said, "It was a shaky warmup."

He didn’t land many jumps and it appeared he would have a rough time to rid his mind of questionable thoughts. "It does shake you up a little bit," Michael said. "But I’ve been competing so much I have learned that a warmup is all that it is. It warms the body up. You have a great warmup you go out and forget it. And if not you forget it and go out and focus on your skating."

At Daytona Beach (Campbell’s Figure Skating Championships) in the first competition I felt I skated good enough to win and tonight it was against the same group of skaters. Tonight it felt good again."