LESSONS LEARNED
Despite silver medal, event exposes Canadian flaws
The much-criticized Nike slogan of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — ‘‘You don’t win silver, you lose gold” — was never true and isn’t now ... except perhaps in women’s hockey.
For everyone else, the games they play at the Games are too global, too fickle, too susceptible to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to be neatly wrapped in a generalization so narrow and final.
So, yes, Canada’s figure skating team was the largest in number with the strongest curriculum vitae coming into the Sochi Olympics, but you can’t send in a photograph of your world ranking for medal purposes — you still have to skate the programs.
And when the curtains went up on the inaugural team event here, nobody skated theirs like the Russians.
And nobody, at any level, skated quite so magically as Yulia Lipnitskaya, the 15-year-old pixie from Ekaterinburg who so captivated the crowd at Iceberg Skating Palace over the final two nights of the inaugural team event that the rest of the five-country cast — even the great Evgeni Plushenko on Sunday — was relegated to a supporting role.
So it was a team silver for Canada on Day 2 of the Games, and a glorious first gold for Russia.
And now each of them, and all the other nations with individual contenders, will rationalize the results of the first new Olympic skating event in 38 years, and try to figure out what, if anything, they mean as a precursor to the “real” skates yet to come.
“It was a weird feeling,” said Scott Moir, at the end of another shocking evening with partner Tessa Virtue. The defending Olympic champions were roundly beaten in the free dance by their American rivals, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, although the team gold medal had long since been decided.
“We tried not to talk about it, but it’s so odd going out there in an Olympic venue (without) all the pressure, but we knew we had to have a good skate to set ourselves up for a week from now.”
What we learned over the last few days was that the supposed wild cards of the Russian team — the very young Lipnitskaya and the very old Plushenko — are lightyears better than might have been expected, considering their respective ages.
Even if Plushenko’s victory over Canada’s Kevin Reynolds in the long program Sunday was, let us say, wind-aided — pushed along by a loving crowd and elevated by an overly respectful panel of humans on the judging panel — it was another demonstration of a wily veteran’s ability to stay in the game, and keep his team in it.
“It’s motivating; it gives me energy,” said the 31-year-old, who tied an 82-year-old record by winning his fourth Olympic skating medal — two golds and two silvers — though Sweden’s Gillis Grafstrom didn’t have a team event.
“It’s the first (gold) medal for Russia this Olympics. I love being first,” he said, not ruling out another
‘It’s absolutely amazing, the longevity that he’s had. He’s been doing the quad since he was 14, so to do what he did tonight and in the short program, after coming back and not having much competition experience this season, is just incredible.’
KEVIN REYNOLDS
Canadian figure skater on Plushenko
run at it in 2018. “I will be just 35 years old. No one has ever done it before. Why not? Perhaps I should try, I don’t know. First I have to rest and talk to the doctors, perhaps implant some more stuff into my back.”
Reynolds might have had cause to feel ripped off by the score. He landed three quads, after all, including one with a triple toe loop on the end of it, compared to just one by Plushenko who, it may be remembered, complained after finishing second to Evan Lysacek in Vancouver that more weight needed to be given to the quad.
But that’s OK, said Plushenko’s coach, Alexei Mishin. The gold medal was the target.
“For him, it was completely no matter to be first, or second or even third. So we did not do the plan to improve his image. He did practical version, to be honest member of the team,” Mishin said.
Also, he said, Plushenko felt a twinge in his back partway through the program, and didn’t want to push it.
For Reynolds, though, it was further confirmation of his fighting spirit and ability to deliver, which felt particularly good after a problem-plagued season. Three quads is big-time.
“Naturally, the quad is a very risky jump. Normally, I hit two out of three no problem, the third one (depends on) condition and how comfortable I’m feeling on the day,” said Reynolds.
He didn’t begrudge Plushenko the first-place marks.
“It’s absolutely amazing, the longevity that he’s had. He’s been doing the quad since he was 14, so to do what he did tonight and in the short program, after coming back and not having much competition experience this season, is just incredible. I have a lot of respect for him.”
Canada learned a few things, too, some vaguely disturbing, some eyeopening, some confirming what they already knew, or hoped.
They learned that their two pairs teams are right in the medal hunt, and that 18-year-old Kaetlyn Osmond has all kinds of moxie and confidence, but that her technical level is still not top-five calibre — she was fifth out of five skaters Sunday despite only one clear bobble.
They learned that three-time world champion Patrick Chan is in for the fight of his life trying to hold off Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu and maybe quite a few others, unless he gets his game in better order over the next five days.
And they learned that Virtue and Moir are struggling with technical glitches and a strangely unmoving free dance that the judges just don’t seem to like — and that the gap between them and the world champion Americans seems to be widening.