LONG ROAD BACK
Patrick Chan is already looking at the challenge ahead,
BOSTON— If ever in his skating life Patrick Chan has had a moment of existential crisis, it would probably have been around 10:58 p.m., Friday night.
That’s when the marks for the three-time world men’s champion flashed up on the scoreboard at TD Garden. He winced. Fifth place overall and eighth in the free skate.
Even in a comeback season of experimental ambitions, after 18 months away from the competitive fray, those were un-Chan figures.
Equally atypical was the raised voice — Chan’s — emanating from the change-room afterwards. “You could hear me down the halls, for sure.”
He might have been railing at officials and the Zamboni, whoever was responsible for the shabby ice conditions by the time Chan, last of the evening’s skaters, stepped through the end-boards gate — a soft, frosty surface with puddles in front of the judges’ seats and little traction for his blades. He could have been taking the name of his long-time choreographer in vain, displeased with the jump placements and transitions inserted into his Chopin program. But mostly the tirade was self-directed.
“I wasn’t yelling at anybody in particular. Just yelling at myself. Just letting steam out. When you’ve had the taste of what it feels like — not the medal, not the winning — but what near perfection feels like, you’re always striving for that. I was striving and I was very far from that. That was the main frustration.”
Near perfection — the Zen of skating — was reached by Chan’s friend and rival Javier Fernandez, who arguably laid down the best skate of his life to capture the gold medal for Spain in defence of his world title. “His scores were outrageous, in a good way,” said Chan, enviously.
South Korea’s Hanyu Yuzuru, reigning Olympic champion, experienced some fits and starts but held on to silver, largely off a dominant lead from the short program segment. Chinese teenager Boyang Jin, a jumping savant, took bronze. Chan just barely staved of a bold bid by American Adam Rippon to claim fifth with a free score of 171.91 and an overall total of 266.75, nearly 25 points shy of his personal best.
That evening, speaking to reporters, he sounded if not quite despondent then certainly dejected. By the following afternoon, however, his spirits had bounced back somewhat. And he has a clearer idea of what’s needed to re-assert himself among the top practitioners of his sport, with the long term objective of the 2018 Olympics still paramount.
“Definitely not as frustrated,” he reassured. “I feel like I’m looking at the season as a whole today. I have to keep reminding myself because it’s so easy to want to be at the very best after having been at the very top, right? It was tough. I had a hard time falling asleep just thinking about what I could have done different.”
The results over this past season have been modest, even humiliating at times, with Chan clearly off his game. He knew it would unfold this way while trying to pivot back into the elite mix. But knowing and actually living it are entirely different. The 25-year-old from Toronto hasn’t confronted this kind of a ranking gap since his mid-teens.
“That’s proof you can never take your position for granted,” Chan said. “Even the very best have to get a little dose of reality at some point. All the champions will go through that. I’m going through that at the moment. But even at my worst, it’s not that bad.”
Leaving Boston and putting this competitive season behind him, Chan and coach Kathy Johnson will emphasize the positive. Primarily: the triple Axel that often gave him conniptions even when he was on top of the world has been pulled apart and re-assembled; it was beautifully executed (once, and popped the second time as part of a combination) Friday.
That’s something to be going on with. Because Chan has no intention of bailing on his comeback plan. He is sure he can rise to at least the level of Fernandez and Hanyu, once again, though they’ve surged onwards and upwards in Chan’s absence — and done it from the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling club under the tutelage of Brian Orser.
“I don’t have any doubts,” Chan insisted. “There’s room for me to grow and absolutely be on the same level that they are. In order for me to get there, it’s a bit different from them. I have to be able to manage so many things about my program and put it out as a whole package, which I’ve been having trouble with this year.”
The quad toe, which once came so easily — more so than the triple Axel, in fact — is now an iffy thing. Chan tripled down out of one in the free but landed a second, in combination. He’s not overly worried. “It just needs more mileage.” Meanwhile, though, competitors such as Jin are doing four in the long program (he only landed two cleanly). Chan is not approving. Quad frenzy is not the essence of his multi-dimensional skating.
“I feel like I’m just repeating my- self, all lonely,” he laughs, finding himself now in the meh quad camp, even as he works on adding a four-rotation Salchow.
“Javi’s program was extremely entertaining,” he notes of Fernandez’s lively Guys and Dolls routine, which included three exquisite quads. “On the other hand, I’m hearing people tell me they love seeing the in and out not only of the choreography but the jumps and how the jumps almost become part of the choreography instead of interruptions, whether it’s landed or a fall.”
That’s at the top of his to-do list for the summer, once he has picked new short- and long-program music and settled on choreographers.
“I want to focus foremost on maybe simplifying and feeling like when I step on the ice I’m not fearing the program, I’m looking forward to it.”