OLYMPIC MEDALLIST OSMOND: THANK YOU!
Kaetlyn Osmond might decide to defend her world championship in 2019, and she might eventually commit to the 2022 Olympics, but there’s no rush.
The 22-year-old figure skater, who crammed gold and bronze Olympic medals into her suitcase in South Korea in February and added world championship gold in March, then hopped onto an epic Stars on Ice tour, is taking a breath.
On Monday she announced that she would skip the 2018-19 Grand Prix season. A day later the other skate dropped, as her participation in the 30-stop Thank You Canada tour was announced.
“My decision (not to skate the Grand Prixs) came before that, but this just gave me another opportunity during that time so it just solidified that choice a little bit,” she said Tuesday from Toronto.
“I wanted just to take the time to refocus. There has been so much focus put on 2018 and in the last four years there was a lot of rebuilding of myself; from being injured and learning to compete again and just making the most of every competition in 2018.”
She suffered a broken leg in practice in the fall of 2014 and missed a year of competition.
“After everything that’s happened, I’ve achieved much more than I could ever have dreamed of. I haven’t had time to think since worlds. I’m taking the time off that I need now and just to be able to refocus and re-evaluate what I want.”
She is getting her short program choreographed in Toronto in the next couple of weeks and expects to do the long program shortly afterward. So she’ll be ready to compete again, if she so desires, after the Thank
You Canada tour wraps in late November.
She expects the 30-stop tour to keep her in top shape.
“It’s definitely going to be a lot of work. The most cities I’ve done is 12 cities, the Stars on Ice tour, so doing a 30-city tour is definitely intimidating. But I’m so excited about it and it’s going to be really demanding. If the decision comes that I’ll come back for the rest of the season, I know that I’ll definitely be in shape for it.”
Nationals are in Saint John in January, worlds in Japan in March.
“In theory, if that’s what I set my mind to, that’s what I will fight for. I talked to Ravi a lot about this decision and we’re leaving all options open right now. We both know if I decide to come back and defend my world title, I’ll be ready for that.”
The Thank You Canada tour, which also features retirees Patrick Chan and the pairs team of Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, as well as pending retirees Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, hits a bunch of smaller centres that don’t show up on the Stars on Ice circuit. One of them is St. John’s. Osmond is from Marystown, N.L.
“That is going to be really special to me. It’s very rare that a show will go to Newfoundland. This year I had a lot of messages from people who were hoping a show would go there. So it’s really exciting to finally say I’ll be able to wrap up the tour there.”