Austman an Olympic rookie ... mostly
Skater gets her shot at spotlight
This was Larkyn Austman’s Olympic debut. More or less.
She was on the ice with the grieving Joannie Rochette for the short and the long program at the 2010 Games in Vancouver. Austman of Coquitlam, B.C., was also there when Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir were taking their bows, ready to collect gold medals after an inspired free dance.
Austman, who turned 12 that day, was a flower retriever.
“And it was insanity for both Joannie and Tessa and Scott,” said Austman. “We were all out there.”
On Thursday she’ll turn 20, and she is an Olympian. She skated her short program here on Wednesday, to a disappointing score of 51.42. That left her in 25th place, one short of qualifying for the long program.
“I felt very comfortable and confident out there,” she said, before finding out she hadn’t qualified. “I wish my score could have been higher, but there is nothing else I can do about it at this point.”
Anyone who has watched figure skating at an Olympics knows that’s how it goes. Fans also know that after really good skates by the top contenders, the ice is littered with stuffed animals and flowers, which have rained down from the stands.
That’s the call for a horde of teeny, tiny flower retrievers to skate like water bugs all over the ice, gathering up the booty, which is stuffed into big bags and offered to the skater whose performance inspired the plush avalanche.
“Often skaters, especially high calibre skaters like Joannie, don’t take all of it because it’s just way too much for them,” said Austman.
And how does one become a flower retriever? Austman attended a tryout at the Four Continents competition held in 2009 in Vancouver as a test event for the coming Olympics.
“The criteria was nice skating, we had to be a certain age and under. It was purely based on esthetics, pretty much.”
She remembers the experience primarily because of the family tragedy that befell Rochette. Her mother died days before Rochette was to compete, which she did under tremendous scrutiny and pressure and heartache. She won the bronze.
I feel very lucky that my success in my sport has given me a platform to tell my story and have a voice that’s going to be heard. Part of the reason I didn’t want to come out in 2014 was because I wanted to establish myself as an athlete first, and I didn’t want my sexuality to become my main story of my Olympics. And now I have the success and the foundation to really make a bigger difference. Pairs figure skating bronze medallist Eric Radford of Balmertown, Ont., on the advocacy role he has taken on during these Games