Chan feels overuse of quad jump bad news
Canadian champion says sport trending in wrong direction
HALIFAX— They are quad freaks. Q-geeks.
Sideshow entertainers, like bearded ladies and Amazing Elastic Man, dragging men’s figure skating into theatre of the absurd.
Patrick Chan wants no part of it. Well, maybe a little part of it. Perhaps as many as three quads stuffed into his long program next season. Or, hmm, two in the short? But no way Jose (or Javi or Yuzu) will the three-time world champion and now eight-time Canadian champion ever go 4-for-4 in the free skate.
“I will never do four quads in my career, I’m telling you right now. “It’s impossible.” It would also be B-O-R-I-N-G, the antithesis of what 25-year-old Chan has brought to figure skating over his career, what drew him to the sport originally and then drew him back again, eyes on the 2018 Olympics after a season’s hiatus.
“What you’re going to end up seeing is just people moseying down the ice, setting up for a quad four times,” Chan snorted during a roundtable session with reporters the morning after his take-back on the national title. That would be 21⁄ minutes right there,
2 just focused on entry into the quad, set-ups which are invariable simple and direct, no dimension for creative transitions. And two minutes left for the rest of a long program, all the triples and footwork and flying camels and spins and . . . the stuff that makes figure skating compelling.
Chan went off on a bit of rant, bringing the subject up himself, yet he’s right.
With reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu already up to three Qs in the long and mulling the addition of a fourth, with China teenager Jim Boyang attempting six quads between his short and long at the Grand Prix final last month, the sport is starting to lose its marbles, certainly its aesthetic-athletic balance.
“It’s getting a little ridiculous,” says Chan. “It’s like the slam dunk contest, that’s what it’s becoming.
“Something’s gotta give.”
We’ve been down this road before, if not quite so spectacularly. There’s always been a tug of war between the jump preachers and the advocates of more refined, diversified skating. Elvis Stojko, firmly in the former camp, practically blew a gasket after American Evan Lysacek won gold at the Vancouver Games quad-less, knocking off a scathing column for Yahoo Sports headlined: “The Night They Killed Figure Skating.”
Stojko and like-minded brethren would rather entomb the sport in quad sarcophagi.
Frankly, the thrill of four-rotations is gone, so maybe that’s why Yuzuru and others believe they need to bring back the buzz to the power of four. Because the 21-year-old Japanese phenomenon — reigning Olympic champion who seems to break his own global score records every time he competes — already has three in the long (two toes, one Salchow) and two in the short.
He may be settling the template for everyone else — so long as judges continue to heap gaudy marks on Yuzuru and don’t seem unduly concerned about the looming imbalance of such programs.
“I don’t know how it’s physically possible trying to do four quads with the same quality of skating,” argues Chan. “I will be dead-honest. I think with my experience and credibility at this point, with the men already doing three quads, the quality of skating has diminished.
“People are getting excited because of the jumps, like, ‘Wow’, instead of looking at the entire program and saying ‘That’s beautiful, that’s a piece of art right there.’ Now it’s just become, ‘Wow, did you see that quad Sal? Smoked it.’ “OK, but what did you do after?” Chan landed two quad toes cleanly Saturday night. That was a huge step forward in a season that has been rewarding and frustrating; at one point, after a disappointing fourth at the Grand Prix, so un-thrilling that Chan contemplated pulling the plug on the whole comeback.
“When I got back, the week after the final, I wanted nothing to do with skating.”
He doubled out on a second planned triple Axel — which many skaters still consider harder to execute cleanly than any quad — because he’d run out of gas by the end of his Chopin routine. And, most crucially to his timeline of incremental improvement, he put out his best short program of the season after months of vexation with the thing. It too was Q-inclusive.
“I never imagined three years ago the men would be doing two quads in the short program,’’ says Chan, disapprovingly. “That’s so risky.”
Because you can lose a title in a botched short, never overcome the gap, as defending champion Nam Nguyen demonstrated on the weekend.
Chan can do the quads, or at least the trick is coming back to him, and he may add a Q-Sal to the long next year, but he won’t become a jumptrick pony. There’s more artistry and definitely more variety — all the high-difficult elements that don’t require grabbing air — to his style. (As there is, it should be noted, to Yuzuru and reigning world champion Javier Fernandez, if not necessarily the audacious quad-sters pushing muscling into the picture.)
So let Yuzuru add a fourth Quad to his long — as he’s fooled around with during show performances — if that’s his intension.
“Adding that fourth quad, he’s upping the reward-risk factor,’’ notes Chan. “So let them try to keep pushing each other. I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show from afar.”
And then we’ll see, with two Chan quads in the long-bag, perchance three, maybe a Q-pair in the short. He won’t be rushed.
But we might see, some day, a quad-quad combination? It seems ludicrous. And yet.
Chan: “These young guns, with their narrow, narrow hips? It’s possible — quad Lutz-quad toe.
“Imagine. Yikes.”