Coverage of 2018 Winter Olympic Games
Penticton freestyle skier sitting in 2nd place, figure skaters topping team event standings
Canada’s figure skaters took the ice Thursday at the Pyeongchang Olympics, emerging atop the standings after the first day of the team competition.
The figure skating meet kicked off before the opening ceremony, and the morning start had Canadian star Patrick Chan a bit rattled.
The three-time world champion rose at 5 a.m., grabbed a coffee on the way to the bus for a 7 a.m. practice. Then it was back to the athletes village for some oatmeal, and a short rest before hopping the bus back to the Gangneung Ice Arena for a 10 a.m. competition.
The bleary-eyed Chan had a shaky skate to open Canada’s gold-medal quest in the team event. But he wasn’t the only one.
“I don’t think any of us in our entire careers, even mine, have ever skated this early, or with this type of schedule. I definitely think that played a role,” Chan said. “But we’re not in control of that.”
Skating to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, the three-time world champion from Toronto fell on both his quadruple toe loop and triple Axel to score 81.66, putting him in third in the men’s short program.
Shoma Uno was the only skater to lay down anything resembling a clean program, scoring 103.25 to put Japan in the lead. Alexei Bychenko of Israel sat second with 88.49. American phenom Nathan Chen, a favourite for gold in the individual event, fell once and popped a quad jump to score 80.61.
Two-time world pairs champs Meagan Duhamel of Lively, Ont., and Eric Radford of Balmertown, Ont., had a better day than Chan, finishing second with a score of 76.57, behind Russians Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, who recorded 80.92. Germans Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot were third with 75.36.
After the first two events of the team competition, Canada was atop the standings with 17 points — three ahead of the Americans. Japan was third with 13.
Figure skating traditionally runs well into the night at the Olympics, but North American prime time television demands has it finished by the early afternoon in South Korea, throwing skaters’ schedules topsy-turvy.
The team event continues Sunday and Monday.
Meanwhile, star freestyle skier Mikael Kingsbury from Deux-Montagnes. Que., is off to a promising start in men’s moguls.
He took top spot with 86.07 points on the Phoenix Park course, and his teammate Andi Naude of Penticton was second on the women’s side with 79.60 points.
Elsewhere at Phoenix Park, Canadian snowboarder Laurie Blouin was carried off the course on a stretcher after a nasty fall in training.
The reigning world champion in slopestyle fell heavily when her board got stuck in a crack after she landed a double jump. There was no immediate word on the extent of her injuries.
Mixed curling continued for a second day with Canada’s John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes improving to 3-1 with a 10-4 win over China’s Rui Wang and Dexin Ba and an 8-2 rout of Finland’s Tomi Rantamaeki and Oona Kauste.
On Thursday, Morris and Lawes earned a hard-fought 6-4 win over Matt and Becca Hamilton of the United States in the evening draw after dropping their opener 9-6 to Norway’s Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten.
Morris, originally from Ottawa, curls out of the Okanagan on the men’s team skipped by Vernon’s Jim Cotter, which also features Kelowna’s Tyrel Griffith and Rick Sawatsky.
Morris, 39, won Olympic gold in 2010 playing third for Kevin Martin.