Patrick Chan is setting his sights on a new figure skating competitor.
Chan behind Japanese teen in two-man race for gold
‘I wasn’t trying to clear 100 points. I was just trying to turn in the best performance I possibly could — and I did. I was very, very surprised by the score.’
YUZURU HANYU Japanese teen figure-skating sensation
SOCHI, Russia
Patrick Chan has been the prey for three years, and the sense of being hunted seems to have become more onerous with each passing season.
Finally, he’s got someone else to aim at.
Chan placed second to the redhot Japanese teen, Yuzuru Hanyu, who broke his own world-record score, cracking the 100-point barrier in Thursday night’s short program at the Sochi Olympics figure skating competition — and Hanyu’s score of 101.45 was nearly four full points clear of Chan’s 97.52.
But the 23-year-old, three-time and reigning world champion from Toronto looked as calm and ... well, relieved, as he has been in a long, long time.
“I like being in second. I like the chase,” Chan said.
“I can enjoy the Olympics during the free skate while Hanyu has a bit of a target on his back. At the Olympics, that target is bigger. We’ll see how he handles it.”
Asked if he thought the lead might weigh on Hanyu overnight, waiting for Friday night’s free skate, Chan said “it did with me, at my world championships after the first one.”
Chan wasn’t perfect Thursday, but given his recent history at the biggest events — winning the 2012 and 2013 worlds despite an unsettling number of glitches — his was an encouraging skate.
He landed a quad-triple combination to open, but his triple Axel was a little too big and he couldn’t hold the landing without putting his second foot down. He also finished a half-tick behind his music.
Hanyu? He was perfect, or as close to it as any skater has come in the short program.
No one else is really in the hunt for gold.
“I’m over the moon,” said Hanyu.
“I wasn’t trying to clear 100 points. I was just trying to turn in the best performance I possibly could — and I did. I was very, very surprised by the score.”
Chan still owns the world record 295.27 total score set in November at the Trophée Bompard in Paris, but it’s in danger from Hanyu, who looked completely nerveless. He said looks were deceiving.
“I was very nervous and my legs were shaking. So I was certainly feeling the atmosphere of the Olympics out there. But it’s still like any other competition and I tried not to forget that. Brian (Orser, his coach) told me, ‘I’m so proud of you’. I was really happy when he said that.”
If Chan’s four-point deficit looks daunting, it’s another 10-plus points back to where two-time European champ (and Orser’s other pupil) Javier Fernandez of Spain sits, in a tight race for third with five or six others in close pursuit.
So it’s almost certainly Japan or Canada for the gold, and neither country has ever produced an Olympic men’s champion.
“Four points in the long program, I have (made that up) before, and I have quite an arsenal for the long program,” Chan said.
“I am relying on that and relying on my training from the whole year. It’s going to be a whole new day (Friday), a whole new competition.”
It wasn’t such a good night for the other Canadians.
Coquitlam, B.C.’s Kevin Reynolds wrote himself out of the plot early on, falling on his opening quadruple jump and struggling to get the energy back into his AC/ DC Back in Black program. He also fell on a triple Axel and stumbled in a footwork sequence.
“You’re living on the edge with the quads and I took a hard fall on the first one. That took the momentum away going into the rest of the program,” said Reynolds, who plummeted all the way to 17th after finishing fifth in the world a year ago.
“Although I’m incredibly disappointed, it is a quick turnaround, so I need to put today behind me and focus on the free program.”
It was an even harder night for North Vancouver’s Liam Firus, the evening’s first skater.
“I just ... imploded out there. It was nerves, maybe. My heart was racing, my legs felt really jittery,” said the 23-year-old, who fell twice and didn’t make the cut to skate his long program Friday night, finishing ahead of only two skaters, one of them Evgeni Plushenko, who withdrew.
As for Chan, he skates immediately after Hanyu in the middle of the final flight Friday night. He’ll know, if he cares to look, exactly what he’s aiming at by the time he steps on the ice.
Some want to know. Some would rather not.