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 […]
Nam Nguyen
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 into […]
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 […]
The Margaret Garrison show: 2015
In the early morning light – say 7 a.m – a battalion of choreographers showed up at the Powerade Centre in Brampton, Ont. Their job? To create moving, arresting, complicated routines for the sixth Margaret Garrison Ice Show. In one day. In all, 29 choreographers lent their talents to this show. This show held extra […]
Tracy Wilson: the wind beneath wings
This is a story I wrote that appeared on the Skate Canada website: By Beverley Smith Tracy Wilson figures she learns as much as she teaches. Yes, we all know she’s a crack skating analyst for various television networks, having won Gemini Awards for her work. But the former Olympic ice dancing medalist has […]
To quad or not to quad: that is the question
His Four Continents experiment – putting the quad in the short program – was a learning experience that cost Canadian champion Nam Nguyen nothing but a few lumps. He took his lumps (11th overall at Four Continents) and will compete at his second world championship with an eye to the future. In other words, although […]