So why of all people could a person like Denis Ten be felled by such ugliness in a country that he championed so hard to raise up? With his big heart, he wanted to help. How could such a singular life be worth so little? The tributes are pouring in world wide since Ten was […]
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A letter to Marion
Dearest Marion, I wish I could talk to you and tell you all sorts. There is so much to say. I can’t because 12 years ago, you died at age 94, tilting at windmills until the end. So here I am, throwing my words into the wind. And hoping you catch my drift. You were […]
Javier Fernandez: A Promise
Love hurts. During the Stars On Ice tour that wends across Canada to the end of this month, Javier Fernandez will show you just how much. This is Javi Fernandez like you’ve never seen him (but knew him to be): the leading man, the gentle, sensitive soul, the man finally at home in his own […]
Patrick Chan’s Hallelujah Tour
Listen easy. You can hear Patrick Chan take a nonchalant breath. His time is his time now. Hallelujah. The 27-year-old skater, a 10-time Canadian champion and three-time world champion if you want to work the abacus, is hot-stepping his way across the country on the Stars On Ice tour. Toss that maddening abacus. The wild […]
Stars On Ice Becomes Hot Ticket
Outside the Air Canada Centre, there was sturm. Inside there was drama. A post-Olympic Stars On Ice had come to Toronto. But it wasn’t like any Stars On Ice we’d seen in years. The Air Canada Centre was packed. Stuffed right to the rafters. That means 17,000 seats sold. A sell-out in Canada’s largest city. […]
Karen Magnussen passes the torch
Karen Magnussen feels like she knows Kaetlyn Osmond. Now they are members of the same club: Canadian women who have won world figure skating championships. There aren’t many of them, mind: Barbara Ann Scott (1947 and 1948), Petra Burka (1965) and Magnussen herself, in 1973. Yes, it’s been 45 years since Magnussen won that last […]
Inside the heart of Moore-Towers and Marinaro
It was telling: Kirsten Moore-Towers burst into an ugly cry against the chest of her partner, Michael Marinaro, as soon as they took their final pose after the short program at the world championships in Milan on Wednesday. Surely they were tears of joy? They had just nailed it, big time: triple twist, whopper of […]
Kaetlyn Osmond and the Dark Side of a Swan.
No, Kaetlyn Osmond does not have an evil twin. But she can pretend. And when she does, as she does in her free program to the movie “Black Swan,” this season, she is convincing and powerful, a potent force on the ice. It does no good to watch her do this routine on Youtube. (But […]
Daleman, pressing onwards to the free
Today, Gabby Daleman will find her rhythm. It’s what she does in times of peril. The national championship proved to be one of those times, when she endured strep throat, that was replaced by pneumonia by the time she whizzed through her free skate to the rapturous “Rhapsody in Blue.” Even so, she took her […]
Virtue and Moir: on Top of the World
To describe the genius of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir is to require an armful of exclamation points. As one fellow skater put it, they are “beyond.” Way back in 2010, when Virtue and Moir won their first Olympic gold medal in Vancouver in their early twenties, the 1980 Olympic champion Robin Cousins was already […]