Got it this time
After failing to making 2018 Olympic team, Chartrand wins gold at nationals
SAINT JOHN, N.B. — When the final scores flashed on the TV monitor, Alaine Chartrand, her face stretched in a victorious grin, was lifted off her feet and spun by boyfriend Kevin Reynolds.
A few feet away, Gabrielle Daleman was being consoled by her coaches.
Happiness and heartbreak set the backdrop for the women’s singles event at the Canadian figure skating championships on Saturday, as Chartrand captured gold a year after she narrowly missed making the Olympic team, while Daleman plummeted from first after the short program to fifth, in her first competition since taking a break to focus on her mental health.
“Obviously last year at this time was one of the worst days of my life, finding out I wasn’t going to make the Olympic team when I was this close, so a year later, a lot of different feelings. This is why I skate, for this right now, this feeling,” Chartrand said.
“Today was the redemption I was looking for. It felt really special.”
The 22-year-old from Prescott, Ont., started the day in fifth place, but she loves to battle from behind.
And on Saturday, dressed in a sequined burgundy dress, and skating to music from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, she landed six triple jumps to score 185.91 points.
Daleman, the leader after the short program, fell twice and nearly fell twice more. When her score of 166.92 came up, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“It was honestly crap,” she said. “That’s not how I’ve been training it. I’m very disappointed with how today went.”
Aurora Cotop captured the silver (169.35), while Veronik Mallet was third (168.53).
Chartrand won the Canadian title in 2016, but the next two seasons were a roller-coaster of ankle injuries. She spent the Olympics on vacation in Hawaii. She tried to pretend they weren’t happening. She didn’t watch a minute of the coverage.
Then she upended her life, moving to Toronto and enrolling in kinesiology at York University.
“I had a really strong singular focus on skating between Sochi (2014 Games) and Pyeongchang, and I don’t think that was always healthy for me, to not have other things that I could be distracted by on a hard day,” she said. “This is probably the most I’ve enjoyed my day-to-day training.
“And I’m skating because I want to keep skating, I’m taking skating as the opportunities and privileges I’ve gained, and I’m trying to take advantage of that, instead of that — ’oof!’ pressure — like ’I need to skate well and get the score.’ I just want to be happy at the end of my skate.”
Her boyfriend Reynolds is a two-time Olympian and a silver medallist in the team event in Sochi, who recently announced his retirement.
Daleman, a 21-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., was the defending Canadian champion, edging world champion Kaetlyn Osmond last season. She also won bronze at the 2017 world championships.
She helped Canada to gold in the team event at the Pyeongchang Olympics, but then had a disastrous free skate in women’s singles, and was inconsolable after.
Saturday’s free skate was nearly as heartbreaking. She fell twice, and nearly fell twice more, plummeting down the standings to fifth place.
MEN’S SINGLES/ICE DANCE
Nam Nguyen captured the men’s singles title at the Canadian figure skating championships on Saturday, edging 14-year-old phenom Stephen Gogolev.
Skating to music from the movie La La Land, Nguyen landed two clean quadruple jumps en route to scoring 258.01 total points. Gogolev popped his quadruple Lutz, but landed his quad toe loop and quad Salchow cleaning, scoring 253.56 for silver. Keegan Messing was third with 247.44.
Earlier in the day Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje won the ice dance title.
The duo from Waterloo, Ont., scored 213.78 points, which topped the previous Canadian championship best of 209.82 set by Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir last year. But the International Skating Union has changed the scoring this season, to allow for higher grades of execution.
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier had the best free dance score of the night for their performance to “Vincent,” but it wasn’t enough to pass Weaver and Poje.
They finished second with 212.31 points.
EX-CHAMP KILLS HIMSELF
John Coughlin, a two-time U.S. pairs champion recently suspended from figure skating, died by suicide in Kansas City, Missouri. He was 33.
U.S. Figure Skating released a statement Saturday and cited his sister, Angela Laune.
The sister said in a Facebook post that her “wonderful, strong, amazingly compassionate brother John Coughlin took his own life . ... I have no words.”
There were no further details from her.