MONTREAL
Ice dance. Growl.
Navigating all of its ins and outs and chilly winds is the stuff of a champion.
The safe thing: defending world dance champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates, skating to Queen, of all important things, sit in first place with GOEs as high as an elephant’s eye.
Their bonus points for their choreographic rhythm sequence left everybody else in the dust: 6.43. Second on that ethereal element were the Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri with 5.57.
Two-time world bronze medalists, and hoping for more here, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were slotted with 5.14 which incredibly puts them in a tie with Brits Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson on that sequence.
There are other elements to puzzle over, of course. But at the end of it, the results of the rhythm dance on Friday were so predictable: Chock and Bates in the lead with 90.08, Guignard and Fabbri second at 87.52 and Gilles and Poirier sitting back at 86.51, just 1.91 points ahead of the showy, entertaining British team.
Guignard and Fabbri say they are ready for a fight. “We always love to attack,” Fabbri said. “Actually it’s easier than defending.”
They would rather the results not be predictable.
Interesting news: Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, despite missing a couple of months of good training with her concussion, delighted the judges with their Michael Jackson routine and ended up fifth with 82.30, only 2.30 back of fourth place. Up to a week and a half ago, they were not certain that they would be able to attend this week.
There were surprises, too. One of Canada’s top teams, and national champions last year when Gilles and Poirier had to skip the Canadian championships, Lawrence Fournier-Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen, dropped precipitously to 10th place in the rhythm dance. They lost points when Fournier-Beaudry stepped out of her second twizzle and earned only 75.79.
Sorensen also received only a level one on his diagonal step sequence (his partner got a level two). They did not shine.
Sorensen is under investigation for sexual assault, but has not been charged. He and his partner pulled out of the Canadian championships to avoid distraction from the event, but they decided to come here.
Back in January, Sorensen said the story was still fresh and emotionally tough for him. “Something like this can be really traumatic if you don’t feel that you did anything wrong,” he said.
Since then, Sorensen said the “story is a little bit more behind us.”
“The process is doing its course,” Fournier-Beaudry said. “It’s following every step, every rule. And we trained really hard to be here and we’re just very happy to have the chance to perform here.”
So were Lajoie and Lagha, but for different reasons. Lajoie had a fall in training, but thought nothing of it at first.
“I didn’t fall on my head, first of all,” Lajoie said. “Some people aren’t aware that you can have a concussion without falling on your head. The impact was on the right place when I fell that I had a whiplash. So my brain moved in my head. What is dangerous is that I didn’t fall on my head and didn’t know I had a concussion. I didn’t feel it right away.”
She said she did feel rather “weird” after the fall but just thought the sensation would go away. “It was just a fall,” she said.
But only two days later, she had seriously bad symptoms. “It was a big, big concussion,” she said. “It was the worst injury I have ever had.”
Lajoie was out for a month, following concussion.
She returned to training a month ago, but periodically would feel symptoms. She would pull back on the training. “It was a long injury and a bad one.”
At one point, Lajoie was concerned that she would not make it to the world championships. She and Lagha had been on the team to go to the world championships in Montreal, which was cancelled because of a COVID lockdown. “No way am I not going to do it,” she said. But doctors persuaded her that she had to take care of her brain.
During that month of return, she was on a roller coaster ride of symptoms returning and retreating.
About a week and a half ago, the downsides of her condition did not return.
Their effort on Friday meant more to them than if they had not had to go through a concussion protocol. They did it in spite of it.
Lagha worked on some of his weaknesses while Lajoie was off. ”That’s when you learn,” he said.
Their practices have been electric.
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