FIGURING OUT THE NUMBERS
Olympic spots on the line at Worlds
Skaters representing Canada at the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki will carry more than just medal hopes and expectations of fans back home. The way those 16 athletes perform will also 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 for Pyeongchang, South 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 that understand the atmosphere at the worlds and the expectations means a lot, Michael Slipchuk, high-performance director for Skate Canada, said Sunday.
There’s something else about the world championship squad that must be noted, though: Ten of them are at least 26 years of age and four will be 30 or over when competition starts in Helsinki, including Duhamel and Radford and fellow pairs skater Dylan Moscovitch.
But Slipchuk says prospects look good for the future. Skate Canada has never had to worry about developing prospects for men’s or women’s singles, he says, while ice dance numbers are also in good shape, as suggested by the 15 entries in both junior and novice nationals last week.
Pairs, though, has always been an organizational challenge.
“It’s a work in progress. It’s a matter of finding athletes that are interested in pairs, getting pairs together,” Slipchuk said. “The pairs locations — there’s only a few areas that have strong pairs programs. Not a lot of coaches are trained to teach pairs, so there’s a lot of factors that go into it.
“Often they have to be older. You’re looking for older skaters: older boys, older girls. The boys are stronger, have matured and done all that. It’s just one of those things. It has always been an ongoing battle — not only for Canada, but the whole world — to build pairs.”
Also named to the team were Kevin Reynolds (men’s), Kaetlyn Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman (women’s), Lubov Ilyushechkina and Moscovitch, and Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau (pairs), and Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, and Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier (dance).
PAIRS
It has been an amazing six years for Duhamel and Radford, two small-town Ontario kids who grew up to become Canadian figure skating superstars.
History 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. Ilyushechkina and 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,” Duhamel said. “We could never have imagined what was ahead.
MEN’S
Magnificent, elegant, graceful, confident with a touch of his carefree teenage self thrown in — yep, Toronto’s Patrick Chan was all of that on Saturday night when he won his ninth Canadian figure skating title. That string started in 2008 in Vancouver and was interrupted in 2015 in Kingston, Ont., only because he took the year off to get a break following the Olympics.
Skating to A Journey, a significantly meaningful composition by 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.
WOMEN’S
Osmond overcame a couple of frustrating tumbles on two triple jumps in the middle of her free skate to reclaim the senior women’s title. The 138.65 points Osmond received from the judges gave the 2013-14 Canadian champion a national-record sum of 219.66 and a margin of about 8.6 over 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.
DANCE
Ice dancers Virtue and Moir continued a successful return from a two-year 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 two-time defending champions Weaver and Poje (113.81 for 192.79). Toronto’s Gilles and Poirier (111.53 for 189.68) were third.