Perhaps you could call the Olympic debut of Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau a happy ending to a pressure-packed road. Perhaps even more so a happy beginning.
The fetching young team finished eighth in the pair free skate this week in Pyeongchang, and ninth overall, under the watchful eye of veteran coach Josee Picard.
Picard had done it, yet again. It had all gone as planned. Maybe better than planned. Nine years ago, when Picard met a tiny Seguin, she planned to get to the 2018 Olympics with her. She knew back then. She could see it. And she knew just how to do it.
But the journey to Pyeongchang has been far from easy. And so much of it has rested heavily on Picard’s shoulders.
Picard was finally inducted into the Canadian figure skating hall of fame in January for a career full of achievements: coach of Olympic bronze medalists Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd (Herbie) Eisler; coach of world ice dancing champions Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz in the early days – two different disciplines, mind. (Who does that?) Coach of singles skaters, too. Anybody realize she was an early coach of Bruno Marcotte, of Patrice Lauzon, and of Kaetlyn Osmond?
Seguin and Bilodeau gave Picard her sixth trip to the Olympics in 30 years. Shall we bow and scrape now?
Coaching high-level skaters brought with it stress and pressure. So in 2002, Picard stepped away from the sport. “I needed to get my life sorted out,” she said. “I needed to regroup and then decide if I was going to do it again.”
The answer, after a time, was yes. “I realized it was one of the things I really loved,” she said.
When she returned, the first group of little kids that she coached included Osmond, who won the national juvenile title under Picard.
While coaching for her entire lifetime in Montreal, Picard helped set up coaching seminars in Newfoundland and that’s where she found Osmond, a spicy 4-year-old. Picard’s practiced eye knew what she was beholding.
“I had picked her out of a Future Stars group,” Picard said. “I already knew she was something amazingly special. I told her, I told the parents.”
Then Osmond and her older sister moved into Picard’s house in Montreal for a time to take more lessons before the family moved to Alberta. Picard was asked if she would like to go to Edmonton too. Picard thought: “Not really.” But she guided Osmond to skate with Ravi Walia, a new coach. She thought he would be amazing. Right again.
Besides, Picard had no intentions of coaching top-rung skaters again. “It was very stressful toward the end,” she said. She wanted only to start with young kids, teaching them basic skills to better skills. After all, this is what she had done with Isabelle Brasseur, a tiny girl that Picard had taken under her wing when the future world champion was only seven years old. Picard paired her up with Pascal Courchesne and together, they won the Canadian junior title in 1985. Brasseur was teamed up with Eisler in 1987, and the next year, Picard had her first trip to the Olympics with them. They finished ninth. Twice more, Picard went to the Olympics with them and they finished third.
Picard had taken Brasseur all the way to the top.
And then along came Julianne Seguin, a tiny girl who skated with joy. With Seguin, Picard found the joy of teaching again. She was 11 when Picard first saw her, a girl with shining eyes and only an Axel and a double Salchow. Picard knew she had a lot of work to do. But what she saw in Seguin is what she saw in herself: a passion for skating and a love for it, too. This joy thing.
Picard decided that Seguin would become her final project. She would put the entire force of her knowledge and effort into taking her as far as she could go. Seguin had come from a small skating club in Montreal, and her coach – a part-timer who had a full-time job elsewhere – could see that this tiny girl wanted to skate pairs. So Picard opened a new club in Chambly, and now has lots of coaches working under her, developing the little ones. But Seguin is her full-time project that she started nine years ago.
Seguin was a singles skater, too.
“And nine years ago, my dream was to go to the 2018 Olympics with this little girl,” she said.
There were tears in the kiss and cry at the Canadian championships in Vancouver when Seguin and Bilodeau won the silver medal and a berth to the Olympics. But it wasn’t all certain that it was going to happen.
Seguin and Bilodeau had a charmed career early, jumping from silver medal at the world junior championships in 2015 and a win at the Junior Grand Prix Final (they defeated a Russian team by 9.79 points), to a senior career the following season. Almost incredibly, at their first senior Grand Prix, Skate America, they finished third, then got another third at the Eric Bompard Trophy in France, which got them to the Grand Prix Final, where they finished fourth. First-year seniors just don’t do things like that.
Things went really fast. This season is only the fifth for Seguin and Bilodeau. “At the same time, because I had known how to do it before so many times, I knew the fast roads, the what-not-to-do and the what-to-do in the road,” Picard said. “I knew what it took to get there fast.”
Unfortunately over the past year and a half, Seguin and Bilodeau have run into snags. Seguin missed a world championship two years ago because of a foot injury. Last year, she suffered three concussions in a row, the first in December of 2016, the final one in July of 2017. And then Bilodeau underwent surgery to correct problems in a right knee last spring.
“It had been hurting him for a while,” Picard said. “Then when Julianne did her [second] concussion in April, we went down [to Toronto], to get choreography done at the beginning of May. Because it was hurting him a lot, we went to see Dr. [Bob] Brock.”
Dr. Brock advised Bilodeau to do the surgery then because by this year, it could flare up in mid-Olympic season. “And there is nothing we will be able to do about it then,” he said.
Segin and Bilodeau as junior skaters in Minsk.
So both skaters were out of action. Picard wept. Another obstacle. During this time, Seguin and Bilodeau missed the Canadian championships and the Four Continents, but it came at a time when Picard’s mother died. Because of the hiatus, she could tend to her mother. “Life arranged that it was done the perfect way,” she said.
They did get to worlds, although they were not really ready. Then more concussions came.
“Two years ago, they were on their way up really really fast and they thought it was a fairy tale,” Picard said. “But you know what? Life is not a fairy tale. And what happened to them in the last year and a half was very hard for them to understand, because they had never had a stop yet in the fast move up.
“To me, it’s all part of growing pains. I was hoping that it would happen soon, even though I know it’s going to be difficult, because I know it’s better to happen now, that they could be in for this Olympic cycle.”
“I was really discouraged sometimes,” Picard said. “But in 45 years of teaching and all those Olympics, this was the hardest year and a half. I have never worked so hard in my whole life.”
Picard is now 61, but the trials of the past year and a half have added 15 years to her, she joked. “But [after the pair final at Canadians], about 13 were taken off, so it’s not so bad.”
It felt like a dream, Picard said, when Seguin and Bilodeau finally nailed their programs at the Canadian championships. Laid them down. Got a standing ovation in front of a huge Canadian crowd. “It was like the dream that we had been working towards, and that I had seen in this little girl from the beginning,” Picard said.
What’s even more of a dream is to have made it to the Olympics with two of her former students, who are now major shakers in the coaching world: Bruno Marcotte, and Patrice Lauzon, who have guided world champions in pairs and ice dance. “I’m back there again with them,” she said. “And it’s amazing because it’s like a big family all over.”
There is plenty of upside to Seguin and Bilodeau. They are still young, she 21, he 24. Picard figures they have a couple of Olympic cycles left ahead of them.
And as for Picard? What about her? Does she have two Olympic cycles left?
Currently, she works with Seguin and Bilodeau from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day. Full time. Afterwards, they fan off to work with others, such as Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon.
“I’m going to take it as far as my health hopes I can take it,” Picard said. “As long as they enjoy it and providing there is no injury, I’ll see what I can do.”
She feels they have something special. They still need to improve a lot, she said. “But I think that for the little amount of time they have been together, compared to other teams [Aliona Savchenko and friends], I think we know what they need to improve.
“There is only so much I can do in a day.”
So far, it’s working.
Both of Picard’s students did a moustache thing in exhibitions
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