MONTREAL
It’s quite apparent that Belgian skater Loena Hendrickx is the queen of mind over matter, of love over pain, of rising to the moment.
Hendrickx, the European champion, wasn’t even sure she was going to make it to the world championships this week, because she had been in so much pain from a problem with her hip.
Nevertheless, Hendrickx won the women’s short program at the world event on Wednesday with a smashing performance, garnering marks of 76.98. She has a cushion of 3.25 points over Isabeau Levito, the elegant 17-year-old from the United States in second place.
Haein Lee of South Korea is third with 73.55 points, only .44 points ahead of two-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto.
They are all heavyweight contenders for the crown that will be decided Friday.
How did Hendrickx possibly manage to defeat them all, especially when she had missed so many practices and had even asked to sit on a chair during a media scrum earlier in the week?
“I actually have no idea,” she said.
Hendrickx’s problems began with a pain in her groin, that travelled into a tendon on her right hip and even to the bottom tip of her butt cheek. With this, Hendrickx could land no jumps for a few days, even weeks.
“I came here without doing any landings,” she said. “It was a super hard week before worlds,” she said.
It was also quite mentally stressful to have no practices or run-throughs just before the world championships. She consulted a mental coach, who set time aside for her despite having a three-week old child to mind.
Hendrickx thinks she and her brother/coach Jorik managed the ordeal well. “We were smart enough to skip a lot of trainings,” she said. But it is also the biggest challenge of this event for her.
Hendrickx skipped a training session on Monday this week in Montreal, then spent her time on the ice turning out of her jump landings. She knew she could do the jumps by themselves. She did not know if she could string a series of jumps together in a program.
“I just have to be confident that I can stand here and just do what I have come to do and that is what I did today,” she said.
Skating to the peppy “I’min’alu,” Hendrickx barreled into a triple flip – triple toe loop combination – with her arms aloft, as she does. She whished into a double Axel with great speed. She did a triple Lutz with both arms up. A combination spin, step sequence, flying camel spin and a layback spin into a Biellmann followed and the crowd roared.
Nobody knows where this crowd came from, since seat sales had reportedly been slow, but they showed up, boisterous and happy when the doors opened, cheering every move and trick. They made the bright and brassy Bell Centre (Centre Bell if you live in Quebec.) come alive.
Hendrickx was in tears.
She said she was helped by the love of skating. “I just want to enjoy the competition was the main goal,” she said. “And enjoying what you do is the main key to success.”
The American women, US champion Amber Glenn and the ghostly teenager Levito showed up to find their way onto the podium this week, and also to try to make their numbers grow for next year at the world championships in Boston. There are two of them, so to do it, their placements must add up to or equal 13.
Canadian Madeline Schizas, on the other hand, is the only Canadian entry. She must finish in the top 10 to allow Canada to send two women next year. (She’s currently in 17th place after a flurry of little point-eating mistakes.)
It doesn’t take much to send plans awry. When Glenn came out skating to “Heads Will Roll,” and wearing a black catsuit decorated with cool silver pointy bits all up the sides of her legs, she ended up falling on a triple loop. She emerged unscathed. She had never fallen in this costume with the sharp points before.
“The loop is my best jump,” Glenn said. ‘It was a shock.” She was encouraged by the supportive crowd to put all her effort into the footwork. She earned 64.53 points, which puts her into ninth place. Then she had to start pulling for Levito.
Levito answered the call in spades. She erased all the uncertainty about her most recent misses in competitions with her performance to “Nella Fantasia.”
She skated as if in a dream.
Levito landed a triple Lutz –triple toe loop combination (officials gave her a warning on the Lutz that it’s tending to the wrong edge), a double Axel and a triple flip. She didn’t fall out of any of her spins or trip on a toe pick (that has happened) and her step sequences sung.
She made a couple of little fists at program’s end, her eyes shining, smiling broadly. Her 73.73 put her ahead of Haein Lee of South Korea, last year’s world silver medalist who is pulling her way back up from an inconsistent season.
Lebeau couldn’t stop smiling.
“I really just reminded myself of my training,” she said. “And how I can physically , and easily do this the way I do in training. I just tell myself how physically strong I am and how physically in shape, to not let myself think” ‘What if?”
She said she forced herself throughout the program to say no to asking herself: “what if,” which sows seeds of doubt.
“And it was perfect,” she said. “It was everything I wanted it to be.”
It was not quite what Sakamoto wanted. She cast a quick glance at her coach after landing a triple Lutz with an edge warning,
Still, even though she is (shockingly) fourth, she is only 3.69 points from the lead, only .29 points behind Haein Lee, and only .44 behind Levito.
Only 3.32 points separate skaters ranked fifth to tenth in the short program.
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