I did not realize, until I watched the NBC broadcast in the evening of Feb. 17, just how deeply ran the emotions of an Olympic women’s figure skating event gone wrong. I had not seen all of Kamila Valieva’s tears when she finished. I had not seen how, when she came off the ice, her […]
Olympics
Tough Decisions
The tough part: Canada has only two Olympic pair skating spots. The even more tough part: Canada had three teams that wanted those two spots. This decision was the most difficult to make for Skate Canada about the 13 skaters that would make up the Olympic team, and also the most controversial. Dance, singles: easy. […]
The Muddy Waters of a Comeback
Eric Radford thought he needed a Plan B. So did Vanessa James. So they hitched their plans together, rather organically. It just sort of happened. But they didn’t expect that the announcement of their new pair partnership with 10 months to go before the Beijing Olympics would be met with such snarling reaction. Hurt feelings […]
Daisuke Takahashi: Heartfelt Comeback
Daisuke Takahashi will be the spice that warms your cocoa this season. The mulled wine. The Kobe beef. The autumn leaves kicked up into a new eddy in the sun. The jack of hearts. At 32, he has done the unexpected after a four-year absence, hobbled by a knee injury and an onslaught of competition […]
Seguin and Bilodeau: not a medal but a win
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 […]
An emotional Olympic pair final
You can’t make this stuff up. No Hollywood writer could have conjured up such a load of emotion and tears and effort and heart as the Olympic pair final. It was epic. Bruno Massot looked so apologetic after he had doubled a triple Salchow in the short program the previous night. He felt as if […]
Patrick Chan deletes a quad – for now
You have to feel for these guys. These single men’s skaters who are going to war this season to out-power all who lie in their paths. They will rotate like spinning tops. They will try to defy gravity, shrug at it, taunt it like fiends. They are coming close to Cirque de Soleil performers who […]
Goodbye (but not farewell) to Rudi Swiegers
It’s true. Yet another top Canadian pair has separated: Rudi Swiegers has decided to take a year off from competitive skating for personal reasons and that spelled an end to his nine-year partnership with Paige Lawrence. The personalities of the two from Saskatchewan always filled the room. Swiegers is known for having offered up his […]
Moore-Towers takes a bold risk
In the days following the world championships, Kirsten Moore-Towers began to think about her future. She dug deep for the answers. She and pair partner Dylan Moscovitch had spoken about committing to another four years, for one more Olympics. But Moore-Towers, still only 21, began to feel that she wanted to do two more, when […]
Moscovitch moves on
Canadian pair champion Dylan Moscovitch admits he was taken a bit by surprise when his partnership with Kirsten Moore-Towers dissolved last month, after the charismatic twosome finished fourth at the world championships, and third in the free skate. “I guess we were wanting different things,” he said by phone this week. “I guess we are […]