Skaters hope for special addition
One plus one equals three — hopefully.
For Canadian women, that could mean sending a trio of singles figure skaters to the Pyeong-Chang Olympics next year. Canada hasn’t booked three ladies for the Winter Games since 1968 in Grenoble, and only thrice before that, extending back to the Barbara Ann Scott era of the 1940s.
The burden here is on the shoulders of 21-year-old Kaetlyn Osmond and 19-year-old Gabrielle Daleman. Not that it’s a primary goal for the teammates, as it is for Skate Canada.
“The thought has crossed my mind and it would definitely be incredible if we could make the three spots for next year,” Osmond said Tuesday. “But mainly I’ve been focusing on myself, as selfish as that sounds.”
It’s not selfish, it’s forthright. Athletes live in their own blinkered little world — certainly at the world championships, which begin Wednesday. They rarely watch other skaters, including teammates, even when training on the ice together. Osmond and Daleman drew the same practice rotation Tuesday, but barely glanced in each other’s direction. Nothing personal, except it is very much a personal, selfabsorbed pursuit.
“Well, I’m just honoured to be here with Kaetlyn,” said Daleman, she of the astonishingly muscle-cut shoulders and rippling trapezius, kind of like the physically transformed Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in The Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
“The ladies in Canada have been really pushing the sport. What she’s been working on, what I’ve been working on, we’ve seen all season it’s really an exciting thing, knowing that could possibly happen, getting the three spots. Just knowing that Canada is now one of the top countries coming in here and we are competitors and we are contenders for the top. So that’s really motivating and inspiring.”
Although Canada has been a figure skating colossus in men’s, pairs and ice dance, the distaff singles have brought up the rear internationally in recent decades, with the notable exception of Joannie Rochette and Elizabeth Manley. Through a particularly fallow period bracketing the turn of the millennium, Canada qualified zero women for the 1998 Olympics and just one, Jennifer Robinson, in 2002.
In figure skating math, placement at the world championships determines how many entrants qualify for Winter Games held the following season — 13 points and under (one point for first place, two for second, three for third, etc.) between two compatriot competitors and they can haul a third person along. Both Osmond and Daleman, coming off strong seasons, are capa- ble of finishing in the top five here, perhaps even climbing on to the podium.
For Osmond, who hails from Newfoundland, this season saw her recapture her Canadian title and earn a world championship berth for the first time since 2014, when she finished 11th. She has had to contend with a series of serious injuries, including a hideously broken fibula. She earned silver at both her Grand Prix assignments this season, won the lower-tier Finlandia Trophy in Helsinki, and was sitting second at the Four Continents Championships last month before slipping out of the medals with a disastrous free skate that included three falls.
“It definitely wasn’t fatigue,” Osmond said of the meltdown. “There is still no explanation for what happened. It was one of those days when things just didn’t fall into place. I guess it’s just time to make up for it now.”
Osmond’s best worlds showing was four years ago, when she placed eighth. This time she arrives as a much more polished performer and with two sublimely attractive programs featuring a high degree of difficulty. Her long routine opens with a triple-triple combination and a double Axel-triple toe.
Post-Four Continents, Osmond took a break “to get my head out of competition for a while” and now feels energized, with her training in Helsinki going particularly well. “I feel so calm and relaxed and just loving every minute of being on the ice.”
Over-amped has been a defining characteristic of Daleman in highleverage competition. This is one tightly-wound young woman. Her coaches — and there’s a stable of them, but mostly Lee Barkell and Brian Orser — have worked to harness that energy so that Daleman doesn’t self-combust. Despite being still a teenager, these are her fourth consecutive worlds. The ripening shows in grown-up poise and more challenging programs.
A year ago, Daleman finished ninth. Breaking that top-10 wall was hugely significant. “The confidence from last year’s worlds has really carried me and lifted me up.”
She won her first international medal, a silver, at the Four Continents competition last month.
Of late, Daleman has had top-up sessions with choreographer Lori Nichol and Manon Perron, who coached Rochette to world championship silver and Olympic bronze. Perron brought her instructive chops to speed up Daleman’s spins and emphasize the deep knee bends that catapult jumps.
“She told me, ‘You need to skate like you’re going to medal. You’re capable of it. I know that inside you believe you can do it. You need to start skating like that.’ ” In other words: Sell it, baby. And Daleman never needs to be told anything twice.