Keegan Messing turned his back to the camera and pointed with both hands to the CANADA emblazoned across the back of his team jacket: the only Canadian figure skater to compete at any of the Grand Prix events this season. He has become the beacon of the Canadian side, through unfortunate circumstance as the […]
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World Figure Skating Championships: Cancelled
At last, the hammer came down. There will be no world figure skating championships this year, for the first time in 59 years when a plane crash killed the U.S. team and scuttled the most important event of the year. The Quebec health ministry decided to spare spectators and competitors and officials and […]
Age is Only a Number, Apparently
Apparently, it’s never too late. You’re never too old. While there’s breath in the body, there is hope. And hang the doubters. Deanna Stellato and Maxime Deschamps were new faces among a small wave of new faces in the pair event at the at the recent Canadian Tire National Skating Championships. And although they finished […]
The waiting game
Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen skate in the singular, which is to say, they skate as one. Nothing about this was clearer than last season when they performed to the percussive freestyle Polish guitarist Marcin Patrzalek (one of my favourites) for the free dance, full of power and intricacies and exquisite moments, a picture […]
A hair-raising experience
Think you’ve had a bad hair day? That somebody took the last Timbit? That you missed the last bus to Barbados in a snowstorm? That the television cable went out in the middle of the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships? So you think YOU have had a bad hair day? Just ask Piper Gilles. She […]
Keegan Messing: Perfect. Well, Almost
His wedding day back in August up in Alaska doesn’t grow old for Keegan Messing. He’s still celebrating it. He won the men’s short program at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships with a routine dedicated to his wife, Lane, using the music from their first dance: “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. The one thought on […]
Messing’s Hard Journey
Keegan Messing lived the best of times and the worst of times, all within a couple of months; married in a charming Alaska-style wedding in August, then stunned by the loss of his younger brother, Paxon, in a motorcycle accident in September. Life seemed to stop. In his heart, you could hear a moth pass. […]
Corey Circelli, Artist and Meniscus Manager
Corey Circelli isn’t the norm. He’s a junior skater who stands 6-foot-1 in his socks. And he seems to be an overachiever, energetic enough to compete in both dance and men’s singles at high levels. Throw all of that into the mix with a bum knee, and it’s astonishing that the 17-year-old skater was […]
Remember the name: Kaiya Ruiter
Kaiya Ruiter bounces into a room and beams like a spring sun, with eyes bigger than loonies. She seems delighted with life. And why not? Ruiter (rhymes with writer) just won the junior women’s title at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Mississauga, Ont., in her first crack at it. And not only did […]
Fast rise to success: junior dance champions
(Photos to come) Flash of lightning: that was Emmy Bronsard and Aissa Bouaraguia waking up the sparse crowd in their rhythm dance at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships on Jan. 6, upending Carol Lane proteges Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont, the elegant red head. There seems to be a bit of a rivalry emerging […]