The story of Keegan Messing reads like a book. A best-selling book. He’s the Indiana Jones of the skating set, pushing his way through temples of doom in his quest for the holy Sankara Stones, except that Messing’s high adventures are hair-raising in other ways: skates that don’t arrive, flights that are cancelled, a pandemic […]
Blog
Virus hobbles pair team
Early in the season, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps seemed to have the world in their grip. After finishing second at Skate America and winning their first Grand Prix gold, in France, and thus qualifying for the Grand Prix Final for the first time, they appeared a lock to win their first national title […]
Don’t Cry for Gilles and Poirier: “Evita”
Finally, after 11 years, it was time to do “Evita.” It just happened. The stars were aligned. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier wanted to do “Evita” 11 years ago when they first teamed up, but the time was never right. It’s so right, they used it to win the Skate Canada International on Saturday with […]
They Never Walk Alone
Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara seemed atop the world last season, as they rumbled to a silver medal at the world championships and a seventh at the Olympics, the first Japanese skaters in 10 years to win world and Grand Prix medals. Over the summer, they lost their mojo. Miura suffered a shoulder injury that […]
Too Sexy for Their Shirts
It was a new look: Paul Poirier stepping onto the ice with a muscle shirt, no sleeves, showing his deltoids, sparking the spark. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, the 2021 world bronze medalists in ice dancing, do quirky and iconic. Now they’re bringing sexy to the mix. Coach Carol Lane found the music in a […]
The Men’s Short Program: A Slippery Slope
Okay, it’s early in the season. We get that. The Olympics took the starch out of a lot of athletes last season and it’s so hard to pull up the bootstraps after that. But the men’s short program at Skate Canada International Grand Prix was….a learning experience for most. It was hard. Really hard. For […]
Tea for Two
Hard toil has paid off for two Canadian women: Madeline Schizas, righting herself for Skate Canada with hard run-throughs, and Gabby Daleman righting herself from a litany of problems after not having done a Grand Prix in two years. Incredibly, they sit one-two after the women’s short program at the Skate Canada International Grand […]
Keegan Messing: A Fond Farewell
It’s going to be hard to say goodbye, says Keegan Messing as it became clear this week that this season will be his last as a competitive figure skater. He’s 30 and has other irons in the fire. During a pre-Skate Canada conference call, Messing sat beside his toddler son, Wyatt, at a breakfast of […]
New faces, new beginnings for Canadian skaters
For the first time in years, athletes at the national team training camp in Mississauga this week, are bunking up with roommates in the hotels, like in the old days. And having buffets. It seems, well, rather normal. COVID-19 hit Canadian skaters harder than many, as dominos of competitions were cancelled domestically. They hit […]
Alone
I did not realize, until I watched the NBC broadcast in the evening of Feb. 17, just how deeply ran the emotions of an Olympic women’s figure skating event gone wrong. I had not seen all of Kamila Valieva’s tears when she finished. I had not seen how, when she came off the ice, her […]