Canada skating into worlds in good shape
All 16 athletes going to Finland are experienced
• Canada’s skaters at the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki will carry more than just medal hopes and expectations of fans back home. How those 16 athletes perform also will determine Canada’s allotment of entries in the next Olympic Winter Games.
Olympic spots will be based on a formula: A sum of 13 placement points or better for each country’s top two results in each discipline — such as first and 12th or third and 10th — would translate into the maximum three berths at Pyeongchang, Korea, while 28 or better would be worth two.
On that basis, it’s a good thing that all 16 skaters travelling to Finland in late March have previous world championship experience and several have earned medals, including gold by Patrick Chan ( men’s singles), Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir ( ice dance) and Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford (pairs).
Going there with athletes who understand the atmosphere at the worlds and the expectations means a lot, said Michael Slipchuk, high- performance director for Skate Canada. There’s something else about the world championship squad that must be noted, though: 10 of them are at least 26 years of age and four will be 30 or more when competition starts in Helsinki, including Duhamel and Radford and fellow pairs skater Dylan Moscovitch.
But Slipchuk, a former Canada junior and senior men’s champion, says prospects look good for the future.
Also named to the team wer e Ke vi n Re yn o l d s ( men’s); Kaetlyn Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman (women’s); Lubov Ilyushechkina/Dylan Moscovitch, and Julianne Séguin/ Charlie Bilodeau (pairs); Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje and Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (dance).
It has been an amazing six years for Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, two smalltown Ontario kids who grew up to become Canadian figure skating superstars.
Hi st o r y will show Duhamel and Radford as the most decorated pairs competitors at the national skating championships. On Saturday at TD Place, they won nationals for the sixth time, breaking out of a logjam of legends with five.
Even with a couple of flaws, they scored 146.51 in their free program for a 227.23 total. Lubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch ( 208.24) were second, while Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro ( 198.74) placed third.
“It’s crazy when we think back to Moncton in 2012 and we won that first title, our lives changed that night,” said Duhamel. “We could never have imagined what was ahead.
Magnificent. Elegant. Graceful. Confident. All with a touch of his teen, carefree self thrown in. Yep, Toronto’s Patrick Chan was all of that Saturday to win his ninth Canadian figure skating title — a string that started in 2008 in Vancouver and was interrupted in 2015 in Kingston only because he took the year off to get a break following the Olympics.
Skating to A Journey, a significantly meaningful composition by Eric Radford, Chan performed brilliantly, scoring 205.36 in his program for a 296.86 total. He nailed a Quad Salchow, a jump he’s added to his program this season.
“That’s what I’ ve been looking for, that was my goal this competition,” he said.
Kevin Reynolds, of Coquitlam, B. C. was second, scoring 174.01 for a 255.77 total, while Toronto’s Nam Nguyen scored 164.52 despite a fall on a quad, for a 240.60 total, finishing third.
Kaetlyn Osmond overcame a couple of frustrating tumbles on two triple jumps in the middle of her free skate to reclaim the senior women’s ti t l e. The 138.65 points Osmond received from the judges gave the 2013-14 Canadian champion a nationalrecord sum of 219.66 and a margin of about 8.6 over Gabrielle Daleman ( 136.05 for 211.09).
“Missing the ( triple toe) loop and flip are really stupid mistakes for me. They’re the most consistent jumps in practice,” said Osmond, the pride of Marystown, N. L., who trains in Edmonton. “So I was really upset about that, but … getting my title back is incredible right now.”
Alaine Chartrand, who won the 2016 title, received 114.66 points for a total of 182.07 to finish third. She competed with a sprained right ankle.
Ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir continued a successful return from a twoyear sabbatical with a sparkling free dance Saturday that earned them 118.79 points for a Canadian- record total of 203.15. They finished more than 10 points ahead of twotime defending champions Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje ( 113.81 for 192.79). Toronto’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier ( 111.53 for 189.68) were third.