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 […]
Nam Nguyen
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 […]
Boys to Men
One thing leads to another. Keegan Messing finished fifth at the Canadian championships last season. That landed him on the national team. That meant he got some financial help for training. And it means that this season, he is actually a full-time skater. Skate Canada photo All of these upticks in his personal situation rolled […]
Nam and the wonderful shirt
Nam Nguyen, 17 and ready for another breakthrough, has never been so well dressed. He showed up at Thornhill Summer Skate in August with new costumes barely out of the box. The shirt for his new free program to the very serious Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by Johann Sebastian Bach shimmered […]
Patrick Chan finds his rhythm
Patrick Chan has been through the valley of doubt and has come through the other side. The proof? He took part at Skate Canada’s national team training camp on Wednesday in Mississauga, Ont., along with the best figure skaters in the country. Yes, he had his doubts after a year off, trying to get his […]