I like to watch Patrick Chan skate for the same reason I like to watch Audrey Hepburn act, or Lang Lang play classical piano or Mikhail Baryshnikov dance, or a craggy hill in Scotland beckon, all misty and verdant. Chan’s presence on the ice is one of life’s little pleasures: that slip and slide of […]
Patrick Chan
Patrick Chan Reborn
For the past couple of years, Patrick Chan has done no skating. None. None at all. Nada. It’s hard to believe that a skater so highly revered by others, with unmatchable edges and speed and flow and power and glide, has put those skates on in recent years only to do a bit of coaching […]
Kurt Browning Farewell
KITCHENER, Ont. The rain fell in torrents on Kitchener, Ont., and two hours away in Orillia, Ont., too, on May 7. A soggy Sunday for the ages. It was a time for final curtain calls, all on the same day: one a visitation for songbird Gordon Lightfoot, who died May 1 at age 84, and […]
Patrick Chan’s Hallelujah Tour
Listen easy. You can hear Patrick Chan take a nonchalant breath. His time is his time now. Hallelujah. The 27-year-old skater, a 10-time Canadian champion and three-time world champion if you want to work the abacus, is hot-stepping his way across the country on the Stars On Ice tour. Toss that maddening abacus. The wild […]
Stars On Ice Becomes Hot Ticket
Outside the Air Canada Centre, there was sturm. Inside there was drama. A post-Olympic Stars On Ice had come to Toronto. But it wasn’t like any Stars On Ice we’d seen in years. The Air Canada Centre was packed. Stuffed right to the rafters. That means 17,000 seats sold. A sell-out in Canada’s largest city. […]
Patrick Chan, a Farewell Look
When I first met Patrick Chan, he was peering over the Hershey Centre rink boards from the ice with only his eyes in sight. He was 10 years old but looked eight, maybe less, at the Canadian national junior championships. As a juvenile, the category on the lowest rung, he took a bronze medal. His […]
The men's short program in Vancouver
VANCOUVER From the mists of Vancouver finally emerged Patrick Chan. And he is shedding some rust. “It’s slippery,” he said, after he fell on his opening quad toe loop, then sliding unceremoniously on his side. Thinking on his feet, he added a triple toe loop to his triple Lutz, but then stepped out of a […]
Patrick Chan, pulling himself to the finish
So much of what Patrick Chan does is linked to emotion, his inner life, how it feels to do something, what it means to him. It gives him a restless foot. And that’s how he’s found himself in Vancouver for the past couple of months to prepare for the national skating championships and Olympics, thousands […]
Hallelujah, Chan finally arrives at Skate Canada
REGINA What a day (or two) Patrick Chan has had. He missed the first men’s practice on Thursday at Skate Canada International. And he arrived just in time to take the ice for the second men’s practice. Without a suitcase. Which means, at the moment, he has no clothes, just practice clothes. And thankfully, his […]
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 […]