MISSISSAUGA, Ont. Keegan Messing is now 33, with a fine spiderweb of white hair among his dark locks. And he’s just caused a rumble by deciding to unretire and set his sights on the Milan Olympic Games next February. You see him on ice, slipping around an ice pad with great speed, trying out a […]
Roman Sadovsky
Malinin: Crazy Good
How do you defeat this guy, this Ilia Malinin kid – still only 20 – who seems to have been hatched from another planet and dropped earthward? Malinin and his mop of tawny hair and an unearthly ability to rotate his body, won his second consecutive world figure skating championship title on Saturday at the […]
Wesley Chiu Snags a Canadian Title
It was as if somebody had thrown some boingy bingo balls into a round vessel and given it a good shake. And out popped a completely unexpected group of men’s medalists at the Canadian National Skating Championships. It’s not terribly surprising that Wesley Chiu won gold – he had taken the bronze medal the past […]
Roman Sadovsky: “You Can’t Make this Stuff Up!”
Roman Sadovsky had big, big plans for the 2023-24 season, half-way to the Milan Olympics. But talk about the blues. If he’d been playing a skiffle, he would have been mashing his knuckles against a washboard. His waters have been muddied, his songs in an unusual key. When he takes to the ice for the […]
New faces, new beginnings for Canadian skaters
For the first time in years, athletes at the national team training camp in Mississauga this week, are bunking up with roommates in the hotels, like in the old days. And having buffets. It seems, well, rather normal. COVID-19 hit Canadian skaters harder than many, as dominos of competitions were cancelled domestically. They hit […]
Keegan Messing: Canadian Champion.
Keegan Messing finally did it. After nine seasons skating for Canada, Keegs won his first national title, doing it the hardest way possible: in a pandemic, with skates that didn’t arrive (at first), with his best friend suffering from COVID, with a trip from hell to get to the national skating championships in Ottawa. Somehow, […]
Keegan Messing: Of Chainsaws and Car Batteries
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]