Madeline Schizas is a smart cookie. After she won her first Canadian title, and is poised to become an Olympian, her biggest goal has less to do with putting a blade to ice than self-preservation. “My biggest goal is to avoid catching COVID,” she said Saturday after decidedly winning by 27.59 points. “That’s my biggest […]
Gabby Daleman
Madeline Schizas Aiming High
Perhaps we can’t technically call Madeline Schizas a Canadian champion. The national championships were cancelled. But effectively, she is, after her decisive win Saturday in the Skate Canada Challenge. The Challenge is all we’ve got to figure out who is tops in the country right now. Schizas, 17, won the women’s event at Challenge with […]
Gabby Daleman: Bumpy Times
For two years, Gabby Daleman has been treading the quaking edge of a bog, trying to find her way out of it, sliding back in. Two steps forward, three steps back. Or is it three steps backward and one step forward, fortified by spirit alone? Always, no matter what happens, Daleman has no intention […]
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 […]
Gabby Daleman: what strength is
VANCOUVER Gabby Daleman, world bronze medalist, never seems to catch a break. She has always had to make her own breaks. And she rides a roller coaster through the rest. You’d think this season that she would have been able to bask in her achievements in Helsinki. But no. At Cup of China, she suffered […]
Daleman, the perfect Carmen.
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. Gabby Daleman blew into the mixed zone after the women’s short program like a red tornado. “Ola!” she said. And it went up from there. Daleman is a bundle of positivity and high energy. Hard to believe, since she ‘s been suffering from a chest infection for the past week and a […]
Gabby Daleman: standing tall
It hasn’t all sunk in yet for Gabby Daleman, at 19, the world bronze medalist. There is a medal now jingling against her heart, even when she doesn’t wear it. That medal is proof positive of so many things: that she can overcome, that she’s as good as anyone in the world, and that she […]
Four Continents Day One
The highlight of day one at Four Continents, the test event for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang? At least among the Canadians, it was Gabby Daleman, a 19-year-old with the mental strength to clobber an apparition, a negative thought, a potential bad day at the office. With all the will she could muster, she landed […]
Women's short program, Boston
BOSTON, Ma. For Gracie Gold, it was a magical moment, if not yet a golden one. The U.S. champion, in front of a home crowd, finally delivered the goods when it counted, in the women’s short program at the world figure skating championships on Thursday. Gold has had so much promise and so many stops […]
Impressions of Thornhill Summer Skate
This is a story I did for the Skate Canada website: http://www.skatecanada.ca/AboutUs/NewsDetails/tabid/2157/sni[2797]/3615/language/en-US/Default.aspx