Haunted by Sochi, Patrick Chan fights overthinking

TORONTO: Patrick Chan is hoping the acknowledgement that his biggest enemy may well be himself could propel him to figure skating gold at the Pyeongchang Olympics at the third time of asking. Chan, who finished fifth in Vancouver in 2010, clinched silver behind Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu in Sochi, where he had been favored to win. The result made the now 27-year-old the latest in a long line of Canadian male skaters who just missed the top podium place at the Olympics, capping an experience he remembers overall as a painful “whirlwind”.

“I lived those Olympic two weeks both times and I don’t remember much,” Chan told Reuters in an interview of his previous Games experiences. “I don’t think I remember much because I was so living in fear every single moment. “After the competition I had to live with the disappointment of not winning gold, but before I remember clearly over-analyzing every situation. “The minute you step into the (Olympic) village you start analyzing and (your) brain is on overdrive. “Is eating this or touching this going to affect my program? To that point, to the -Nth degree. That ruined, absolutely ruined, the experience for me.”

Despite taking an additional silver in Sochi for the team competition, Chan subsequently sat out the next season before a comeback in 2015-2016. A three-time world champion, Chan is known for his artistry in an era of ever-increasing quad jumps, a trend he has regarded with caution amid concerns about skater safety. In the 2017 world championships in Helsinki, Chan landed three quadruple jumps in his free program for the first time, but still only finished fourth, with each of the podium finishers, Japanese duo Yuzuru Hanyu and Shoma Uno, and China’s Jin Boyang, landing four.