Messing in action
At 26, Olympic freshman figure skater is well aware his window to succeed Patrick Chan is already closing fast
GANGNEUNG — They called him kamikaze, 20 years ago when such a label could be attached to a kid, even one with Japanese heritage.
Keegan Messing buzzed around the ice inside an Anchorage arena at great speed and less control, with potential to do some harm, at least to himself. He was five.
“I looked at this little kid, how wild and aggressive he was, and I liked that,” said Ralph Burghart, who took over from Messing’s first coach and two decades later is still on the job. “We started with a couple of lessons a week. By the time he was eight or nine, I really could see that he could be something special. By the time he was 10, he started doing double Axels. He was just a late bloomer, so you just have to be patient with him, and I always knew that.”
Messing is only now getting around to his first Olympics at age 26, which is decidedly late for a figure skater. And he might be a one-anddone Olympian, just as Burghart was for Austria in 1992.
But Messing is also a potential successor to the retiring Patrick Chan, and a Canadian title or two could stretch his ambitions to Beijing in 2022. Messing likes the idea of being next in line, but the clock is ticking.
“I’m definitely feeling the end of the skating career coming, but I’m not done this year. My goal right now is two more years. But I’m somewhere right now where I never thought my skating would take me, so I feel it would be a shame to quit things now. I should go with the flow, keep pushing for bigger, better things.
“As far as (Chan) stepping away, it’s going to be sad to see him go. In my mind, he is the best skating has to offer in skills and performance.”
Messing is a different breed who channels Kurt Browning’s showmanship and Elvis Stojko’s brute power, and is still putting the polish on his programs. If he wants to follow Chan, there will be obstacles, starting with the remoteness of his training base in Anchorage.
That’s not far from Girdwood, Alaska, where he was born and raised and will likely stay to become a firefighter, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. His great, great grandfather on his mother’s side, Manzo Nagano, was the first Japanese immigrant to Canada. His mother was born in Edmonton, and that’s the citizen chip he cashed in 2014.
“The original plan was to start Canadian. But it was just easier to start out U.S. in local competitions. The plan then was to switch when I got good enough to start competing internationally for Canada. But I landed a triple Axel at novice level at nationals and the (American team) sent me to Italy for a summer competition.”
Things didn’t progress as planned, so he made the move.
“They gave me the opportunity after the last Olympics to switch over. I took it. I think it’s the best choice I have made for my skating. I don’t think my skating would have grown to where it is today without the support of Canada. They have shown me beautiful support. I’m so
thankful.” According to his bio, he trains in Sherwood Park, but he never set foot there this season. The closest he came was a flight from Anchorage to Seattle to Edmonton to Regina to compete at Skate Canada, where he acknowledged that a shift of training bases might be necessary. His training partner in Anchorage is a 12-year-old girl. He says she’s got game — “working on a double-Axel, triple (Salchow)” — but that’s just not ideal.
In time he will figure those things out. For now, he’s focused on the task at hand, and has excised the quad
Lutz from his long program, in part because he suffered a high ankle sprain landing a triple Axel on Jan. 23 in training.
He got back on skates a week later and the ankle is still too tender to handle the pick takeoff for the Lutz.
“It became an unnecessary risk. So we’re going to be playing it safe, going for two quad toes and two triple Axels, try to putdownas strong a program as possible.
“I got almost 10 points with a triple Lutz at nationals, which is very high. I’m feeling pretty confident that I’m not losing too many points and I can still be very competitive.” But playing it safe is not really his style. He’s more like his father.
“I’ve got the mentality of running toward the flames,” he said.
He rides a dirt bike, climbs mountains, takes risks. On the first Valentine’s Day he had a girlfriend, he broke his nose trying a flip.
“I did like six of them before that one, and I had a helmet on. But that probably wasn’t the smartest idea.”
He doesn’t want to fall on his face here, so he’s wading into the Olympics cautiously. And he has the benefit of letting Chan take the lead and the pressure one last time.
I’m definitely feeling the end of the skating career coming, but I’m not done this year. Keegan Messing