It’s true, these are different times, but nobody on the planet prepares for a world figure skating championship the way Keegan Messing does. Nobody. The rope-climbing, ladder-ascending, pole-clinging, Lazy Boy-toting, Husky-loving, old car-tinkerer and iceberg paddler of a mountain man from Alaska had to resort to new tricks during a pandemic. The gym was […]
Nam Nguyen
A Challenge to the Finish
“Show me a garden that’s bursting into life,” go the words to the song “Chasing Cars,” a hypnotic tune done by the Irish/Scottish rock band Snow Patrol. And so goes Roman Sadovsky, who won the senior men’s event at the Skate Canada Challenge event on Sunday. After winning his first national title last year – […]
Light in a Dark Place: Seniors
Reigning Canadian champion Roman Sadovsky found it hard to watch himself, remotely, at home in front of a screen, competing at the Skate Canada Challenge – which being that the national championships have been cancelled due to COVID-19 – remains the closest thing to it. When Sadovsky performed his virtual routines about six weeks […]
World Figure Skating Championships: Cancelled
At last, the hammer came down. There will be no world figure skating championships this year, for the first time in 59 years when a plane crash killed the U.S. team and scuttled the most important event of the year. The Quebec health ministry decided to spare spectators and competitors and officials and […]
Keegan Messing: Perfect. Well, Almost
His wedding day back in August up in Alaska doesn’t grow old for Keegan Messing. He’s still celebrating it. He won the men’s short program at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships with a routine dedicated to his wife, Lane, using the music from their first dance: “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. The one thought on […]
Messing’s Hard Journey
Keegan Messing lived the best of times and the worst of times, all within a couple of months; married in a charming Alaska-style wedding in August, then stunned by the loss of his younger brother, Paxon, in a motorcycle accident in September. Life seemed to stop. In his heart, you could hear a moth pass. […]
Nam Nguyen: Growing is Believing
Somehow Nam Nguyen has grown to be 5-foot-11, sometime after that bustling childhood, when as a tiny one, he set all sorts of records: youngest to be pre-juvenile, juvenile, novice, and junior champion of Canada. Now he’s 21. At 20, he finally began to find his footing in matters other than physical growth, all of […]
Hardly Birds of a Feather
Ever see the internet photos of the cats curled up with canaries, cozy and all? Fawns and owls cavorting happily with dogs? Chimpanzees stroking kittens? Heifers licking up turtles with long tongues, happy as clams? Count Nam Nguyen, the son of Vietnamese boat people and Keegan Messing, man of the north woods, in with those […]
“Pretty danged cool”
LAVAL, Que. Keegan Messing is chalking up the good times. They keep rolling in, like a wave. Last Saturday, he got engaged on a windy mountain ridge. He forgot the matches to light up the stove for soup. Everything went wrong. But Lane Hodson said yes. “If she says yes when everything goes wrong, you […]
Nam Nguyen: In The Driver’s Seat
Amble into the Scotiabank Pond arena complex for a mid-August Skate Ontario summer competition, and a voice from a corner rings out greetings. It’s Nam Nguyen, and he’s helping to set up the displays for the Figure Skating Boutique booth. Really? Yes, really. The 20-year-old former Canadian champion (2015) has got a job, working […]