Canadians absorb reality check
Not to put a sunny spin on things. Or a twizzle.
But there were positives to be drawn from the silver medal — gold missed by 21⁄ points — Tessa Virtue
2 and Scott Moir collected at the Grand Prix finals on Saturday.
A season’s best free dance mark, for one thing.
Except ditto for training partners Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, posting a cumulative score of 202.16, compared to 199.86 for the Canadians.
The duo know they left points on the table, that they’re capable of a great deal more than unspooled in Nagoya, Japan.
And that their competitive arc, heading towards the Pyeongchang Olympics, is solidly on target to peak at the optimum moment.
Even if the defending ice dance champions couldn’t quite repeat the feat against friendly rivals who came into the event with the top season scores.
“It’s refreshing in the sense that it’s always healthy as a competitor and as an athlete to feel like you’re chasing something,” Virtue told the Star in a phone interview. “We know that Gabriella and Guillaume are setting new standards in ice dance and they’re going to execute extremely well. They’ll deliver, because we see them every day.
“Strategically, I’m not sure in our plan it would have made a difference coming out of this competition in first or second. It’s nice that we’re close in the points. And we know where we can take these programs. We have the vision of where we need to be come February and that’s the most important thing of all.”
The three-time world titlists — Olympic champions in Vancouver, silver in Sochi — are 18 months into their comeback, resuming a career after mentally recharging with the specific goal of a repeat gold at the Games.
Moir readily acknowledges that medal colour matters at all their competitions. They got a pair of those in their GP assignments over the past few months.
“We’re a team that likes to win, and we expect to win every time we go out. So in that regard it’s a disappointment. But we did a lot of things really well. We know there are some points we left on the board, some things that we can capitalize on.
“But yeah, silver’s not our favourite colour. It’s not a silver lining.”
They had trailed by less than a point coming out of the tangothemed short. In the Moulin Rouge soundtrack free, they couldn’t overtake a French couple that skated superbly.
The Canadians had made a multitude of changes to their free program after NHK Trophy. “It was a pretty tough turnaround,” notes Virtue.
Although no further alterations are being considered, they expect the routine to continue to ripen. “It’s a natural evolution that always happens with our programs throughout the season,” continues Virtue. “You get feedback, we watched video, and we saw some room for growth and improvement, both technically, in each footstep sequence, but also artistically.’’
With Papadakis and Cizeron, the Canadians are in the familiar position of knowing their adversaries intimately. Both teams train under Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer at the Montreal International Skating School. For most of their pre-Sochi careers, they shared a Michigan training stable with Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
“When we watch them, we use it as motivation,” says Moir. “But we learned from training with Meryl and Charlie that we can’t try to be like our competitors, we have to stick to our style. We got away from that a little bit in 2014. We’re looking to not do that this time and just stay true to ourselves.”
In the women’s competition, Newfoundland native Kaitlyn Osmond couldn’t hold on to the smidge of a first-place lead, .054, she had, slipping to bronze on the podium, surpassed by Russians Alina Zagitova and Maria Sotskova, with world top-ranked Evgenia Medvedeva at home recovering from a broken ankle.
The reigning world silver medallist, 21-year-old Osmond doubled down a triple loop and fell on her triple Salchow, finishing with an overall score of 215.16.
“Going into my loop I was feeling a little tight, up in my shoulders. That doesn’t work very well for the loop. For the mistake that I fell on, it was a fluke because that jump has been really solid for me.
“Those are mistakes that won’t happen again,” she vowed.
“I’m feeling really strong and confident. My long program has been improving at each event. My short program has continued to be clean. I feel good about where I am and excited for the rest of the season.”
She’ll now head back to her training base in Edmonton. “Going home, recovering from this event, taking a few days for a little mental rest and then back to training.”
Bronze felt a lot more uplifting for pairs team Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, as they rallied from fifth place after the short. There was a hard fall, uncharacteristic, for Duhamel on the throw quad and the skaters singled out a loop in a triple jump combination.
Radford estimates they have the capacity to earn 12 to 15 additional points from what they garnered in the free, and an overall score of 210.83 behind the winning German team of Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot, with China’s Wenjing Sui and Cong Han claiming silver.
“We have so much experience to draw upon and we just know what we need to do,” says Radford. “There is always that small element of surprise and unknown because anything can happen. But I think that we’re in the best shape and probably skating the best that we have been all around. We just need to show that in competition.”
The two-time world champions have struggled over the past couple of seasons. In a way, they may have peaked too soon in the Olympic quadrennial.
“The last two years, competing has become hard,” admits Duhamel. “It’s not as easy as it used to be. We questioned this summer if we could even qualify for an event such as the Grand Prix final.’’
Their shaky short from among a half-dozen qualifying pairs shook them up. “We really expected to come in and have this amazing short program,” says Duhamel. “Then all of a sudden the rug is pulled out from underneath us and you’re like, whoa, what’s happening? Why can we still not get it together?”
But they battled hard, lifting themselves to a medal in an event of intense parity.
“We felt proud because we fought, we didn’t give up.”