GOLDEN TEAMWORK
Points mean beating OAR is guaranteed without dance tally
Gabrielle Daleman and her supporters watch her score being displayed Sunday as she clinched Canada’s first gold medal in Pyeongchang in the team figure skating competition. Follow Olympics coverage and online at edmontonjournal.com.
You could think of it as a gold watch.
And it was certainly a gold worth watching.
It will be the perfect parting gift for impending retirees Patrick Chan, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford. It was theirs for the taking in figure skating ’s team event on Monday, after Chan did what Chan can do in the clutch, nailing a couple of quads and skating the heck out of the technical side of the men’s long program.
He set it up, and how about this, youngster Gabrielle Daleman hit it out of the park, nailing her long program, helping out her elders.
The reigning Canadian champ finished third in the women’s long program, giving Canada a 63-58 lead over the Olympic Athletes from Russia, with only the dancers to come.
The top dance team in the long earns 10 points, the last just six. The most OAR could get was 68 points, the least Canada could register was 69.
Canada had clinched. Daleman’s teammates mobbed her after her impeccably clean skate, told her what an incredible job she had done for them.
“That was so great to hear from my team,” she said. “We are such an incredible, strong team. I really am glad with what we’ve done. We have definitely made Canada proud.”
Chan stepped up first to lead the way home on Monday with a clutch, two-quad tour de force to win the men’s long program and keep Canada in the catbird seat.
He wasn’t perfect — those pesky triple Axels that have been his nemesis reared their ugliest heads again — but he improvised some combos through the back half of the program, and Hallelujah, there he was on top with a season-best score of 179.75, edging Olympic Athlete from Russia Mikhail Kolyada into second spot.
That sent Canada into the final two disciplines — women and dance — with a comfy 55-48 lead over the OAR. The USA was third at 44. Italy and Japan were no longer in the conversation for medals.
And only Canada and the OAR could harbour any more dreams of gold. Alina Zagitova won the women’s event and the OAR had silver on a string. Daleman hung in and Canada took top spot on the podium.
Chan was asked if a gold in the team event would feel less of an accomplishment for a three-time world champ who never made it to the top of the podium in an individual event at the Games. He gave a heartfelt, team-guy, Canadian, we-are-in-this-together answer. And good for him.
“At the end of the day a medal is a medal. I’m going to hold this medal tight to me and it’s going to be as good as the individual. I’m sorry, that’s how I’m going to see it, how I’m going to enjoy it, and that’s for me to decide. I worked really hard for this. We all worked really hard. We are a very tight-knit group here in Canada as figure skaters and to me that means more than winning a medal in individuals. We can now embrace each other and know that we collectively did something amazing.”
He didn’t know what colour that medal was going to be at that time. But gold was a pretty good bet, and gold it was. And this Canadian team is full value for it.
Chan came back from retirement for this, so did Virtue and Moir. They got the band back together and decided that the team event was worth their commitment. That’s why the only substitution for Canada was Daleman in for Kaetlyn Osmond in the women’s long program. The vets stepped up and said, we got this.
“After Tessa and Scott came back I think we all kind of looked at each other and said you know, you know what we’ve got a great chance this time around and we need to take this seriously,” said Chan.