MISSISSAUGA, Ont.
Keegan Messing is now 33, with a fine spiderweb of white hair among his dark locks. And he’s just caused a rumble by deciding to unretire and set his sights on the Milan Olympic Games next February.
You see him on ice, slipping around an ice pad with great speed, trying out a very low cantilever movement and a quad jump that is as high and long as ever. Messing was always one of those guys that could generate a lot of GOE on his elements, enough to be among the best. His spins were blinding, his footwork always underrated.
He looks lithe and fit.
Messing’s best finish at a world championship was sixth in 2022. He was seventh in his swan-song season in 2023. He is a two-time Canadian champion, and the last time he competed was in Oshawa, where he left the ice with his hands over his heart and tears welling up in his eyes.
Fans missed his open nature, his regard and support for his opponents, his crazy calisthenics and other doings at home in Anchorage, Alaska. He did not prepare like any other figure skater on earth. He wore his lumberjack plaid costume with ease.
He has not competed since he retired in the spring of 2023. Now that he’s back, he has to make the impossible happen over the next six months. Longtime coach Ralph Burkhardt is back on the job, smiling at the challenge. It will be a challenge. The stars must align.
Messing is suddenly splashing into a pool populated by Canada’s other male skaters who have all been vying for the men’s Olympic spot for the past four years. And now, based on last year’s world championship placements, there is only one Olympic spot available for men. And now there is Messing, standing boldly in the way.
Reigning Canadian champion Roman Sadovsky said he wasn’t surprised. “I just feel like it’s something he would do,” he said at a national team training camp in Mississauga, Ont., on Wednesday. “I wasn’t even surprised a little bit.”
Sadovosky, fresh off a win at a Challenger event in Boston a few weeks ago – for his first international gold medal at age 26 – said Messing’s announcement doesn’t change his plans. “At the end of the day, I’m focused on myself and training as hard as I can to do the best that I can with both these programs,” Sadovsky said. “ I’m really proud of it.”
Sadosky, a two-time Canadian champion, finished 12th, 19th and 14th at his three appearances at world championships. At his only other Olympic rally, he finished 29th but he was left in an untenable situation when Messing missed the team event because of COVID protocols. And Sadovsky had to unexpectedly take up the slack.
Aleksa Rakic, only 20, withdrew from the Canadian championships last season because of illness, but the previous season, he had won the silver medal. He has a quad in his pocket.
When Rakic heard the news about Messing’s return, he immediately wondered: “What day is it?”
That’s because Skate Canada had unleashed online a spoof this past April Fool’s day, saying Kurt Browning was coming out of retirement to compete again. Of course that wasn’t’ true. It’s hard to believe, but Browning is now 59 years old, He retired from skating in 1994 after winning four world titles. In fact, he’s even retired from show skating with Stars on Ice.
“I thought it was an April Fool’s joke,” Rakic said. “But I was like, “It’s August. It can’t be.” And then he realized that the news was real.
Rakic admits to mixed emotions. “He’s obviously very good,” he said. “And now the Olympic spot is even harder to get. I would definitely consider him a front-runner.
“But also, I’m happy to see him back. He has such a great energy. The rink. The sport. Getting fans in. It’s definitely a positive for the sport. So that’s nice.”
Stephen Gogolev, who just finished second with a stunning free skate at Cranberry Cup in Boston with three quads, had no reaction. But then, that’s Gogolev. “It’s just going to be more competitive this season,” he said. “I think we’re all going to push each other to do our best.” He says he’s not annoyed by it.
Messing took the feelings of other skaters into strong consideration when he made his decision, he said. “I did not want to take a spot from someone who has been working for it,” he said. ”That was something big that was weighing on my mind. Sadly, at the end of the day, the decision came down to NO REGRETS. That’s what fueled the final decision on coming back or not.
“It got to the point where I felt like if I did not go for this, I would live the rest of my life feeling like: ‘What if I did this.” That is honestly the bottom line, honestly why I came back. But I honestly did not want to look back on this moment and have regrets about not taking the chance.
“Succeed, fail, I can live the rest of my life happy that I took the chance. “
Messing is not the first skater to make a comeback after an absence of a few years. Look at Alysa Liu, who had been a world bronze medalist, then quit. Back she came last year, newly inspired after two years under the radar, won the U.S. title and world championship gold. Back with better tools, and better than ever. But she’s still only 20.
Maia and Alex Shibutani of the United States, have also announced a comeback this season after seven years away, in which Maia dealt with kidney cancer. They won a bronze medal in ice dance at the 2018 Olympics. They have written four children’s books in the meantime.
Nobunari Oda of Japan surprised everybody after retiring in 2017 and becoming a skating TV commentator. Out for nine years, and aged 37, he finished fourth with a masterful, rather unbelievable effort at Japanese nationals in the midst of a powerful men’s team last year. Standing ovations for sure. He had been fourth the year he retired. He has retired again.
And then there was a rash of comebacks for the 1994 season when the International Skating Union relaxed rules to allow ineligible skaters to return. Most weren’t successful, although Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Ginkov won gold in the pairs event, and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won bronze in the dance event.
The 1988 Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt was seventh in the women’s event behind tiny Oksana Baiul, while the 1988 men’s gold medalist, Brian Boitano was sixth in an event won by Alexei Urmanov.
But Messing writes his own story. He retired after skating 28 years and he got to the point of pain in his training and he couldn’t push past it. “I would let up,” he said. “I would be like: ‘I don’t want to push anymore,’” he said. “I was tired of it. I didn’t want to hurt anymore.”
When he started training again, he was looking for that point. Could he push past it now? He was looking for that “depression, anxiety” to push himself to pain and seeing if he had the mental strength to do it. And yes, he found that he did. “I want to push,” he said.
After a two-year break, he found the love of training again. “I found the grindstone and I’ve started honing my blade,” he said.
His goal is the Olympics, but more importantly, he wants to show himself that he can be better than he was.
The idea of returning popped into his mind as far back as December, when he and Elladj Balde were tooling around the ice during a Stars On Ice holiday tour. Messing was always adamant with himself that he maintain his triple Axel, and not lose it. So every training session he was on during tour, he would land a double Axel, then a triple. He wanted to keep his body in fine fettle.
With Balde, Messing thought: “What if I could still do a quad?” And he popped off a quad toe loop. He posted that on the internet. It planted the seed. He realized that he was still skating well. “The Axels are solid, the toes are good,” Messing thought. Even though touring was keeping him fit, he still realized that he lacked the stamina to do the multiple jumps.
When he returned to Alaska, he returned to the ice and started putting in more hours. He began to jump more, building his strength. “Ralph,” he said to his coach. “I’m kind of thinking of coming back and doing this.”
Finally, Messing realized that his quest was “plausible.”
He looked up old videos and started doing his old short and long programs. He found he could get through his long program with decent consistency.
He hit the Stars on Ice tour again and felt tip-top. But the only “bummer” was he was getting an Achilles heel injury that flared up when he attempted quads. “That’s the big hiccup right now,” he said.
Therefore, he’s been trying a quad Salchow and a quad Lutz again. Last week he started landing the quad Lutz. He has landed a quad Lutz in competition – second man in Canada to do so, after Stephen Gogolev – but it’s made a rare appearance over the years.
Now he feels more nervous than ever, now that his announcement is out. “We’ll see if it’s a good decision in a couple of months,” he said. He’s feeling the butterflies, now that he’s back on ice with good competitors. It’s exciting.
He plans to incorporate his anything-goes show performances into his competitive routines, as long as it doesn’t affect his “in-betweens.”
So now comes the work. He has no international score that shows he can reach a defined minimum that would allow him to go to an Olympics.
His quest means that he has to qualify for nationals in Gatineau, Que, in January. He has penciled in a domestic event in Texas at the end of September. And he needs to get to an international event where he can achieve his international benchmark scores. He’s aiming to get to a senior B or a Challenger event.
“There is little to zero chance of me getting a Grand Prix this year,” he said. If he puts up a good international score, he could get on a waiting list as an alternate, but “unless the stars align and the heavens open up, I don’t think a Grand Prix is in the cards for this season,” he said.
He’ll try to put up a good score in Texas and see where it goes. Then hopefully, he’ll get an international competition, and then he’ll have to start Canadian qualification from scratch: sectionals, Challenge and then the national championships. “I don’t think I’ve been to sectionals since my first year qualifying for Canada,” he said, laughing. That would have been in the fall of 2014 for 2015 nationals.
Despite what Rakic says, Messing doesn’t think he is better than his Canadian competitors. “These guys are great competitors,” he said. “I’ve still got to skate. These guys are very strong, and they haven’t been sleeping while I’ve been gone.
“So it’s not like they are going to give it to me. I do not want them to give it to me.”
It will be a long road for Messing.
And then the question comes: Is this just a one-year thing?
Someone has already asked Messing that question. “When I came back, yeah, it’s only one year,” he said. “But what if it is not?”
He’s going to take things one day at a time. He is 33 now and his body hurts.
Over the past couple of weeks, he’s had his regular artist, Lance Vipond, choreograph two new programs. He’s working hard to get them ready to show in Texas. To this point, he has done only about three run-throughs.
Short program is “On the Dark Side” by Corey Taylor with a heavy metal rock sound.
Long program is “The Mountain Song,” by Tophouse, which he skated as an exhibition during the Stars on Ice tour, during Browning’s final season as a skater. Tophouse is an American folk/bluegrass band with some good foot-stomping. Beautiful lyrics. So Keegan Messing.
So he’s heading back home again after the camp, where he unveiled the programs. He’ll see wife Lane Hodson and son Wyatt, now four, and Mia, now 2 ½.
“I’m tired,” Messing said. “The kids are jumping all over me.
“But you know what? Life is good.”
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