It’s time for Chan to step up to the bar
The career of Patrick Chan has been a melodrama in multiple acts.
Some day in the future, a choreographer should transfer all that turbulent biography onto the ice: My Life.
Classically orchestrated, given the three-time world champion’s proclivity for Rachmaninoff, Puccini, Vivaldi and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Though, in a change of pace for the 2016-17 season, the 25-year-old Toronto-raised Chan has chosen a Beatles medley for his short program routine. It’s rather difficult to Imagine. But so was Chan as Mack the Knife in last year’s incarnation. And that worked out just fine.
The current manifestation of Chan — as narrative, not musical motif — has him playing the part of Hamlet. What to be? Who to be? Where to be?
He’s lost his pseudo-mom, Kathy Johnson, who stunned the insular skating monde a couple of months ago by announcing her resignation as Chan’s coach after four years together. Coaching do-si-do is hardly an unknown phenomenon for Chan. He’s gone through eight of them. No. 9 entering the Skate Canada event at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga this weekend is Marina Zoueva, most notable as the creative brain behind Canadian and American Olympic ice dance champions — Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Meryl Davis and Charlie White. She has never coached a singles skater onto either the Olympic or Worlds podium.
Perhaps Chan doesn’t actually need a skating sage at his side. Or maybe at his side is the hardest place for a mentor to be. Because Chan has always had strong views about what he wants and how he intends to get there.
Truthfully, nobody was more startled by Johnson’s decision than Chan himself and the reasons for their un-hitching haven’t been disclosed, though the skater has hinted at blurred lines between on-ice and off-ice relationship. (At one point, Chan was also romantically involved with Johnson’s daughter.)
Yoking himself with Zoueva has also meant relocating to the Russian-born coach’s training facility in Canton, Mich. This comes only months after Chan’s declaration that he was moving to Vancouver to train after seven years in Detroit. He sounded completely committed to that arrangement, making much of the fact that he longed for a return to Canada in the build-up towards the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Yeah, so much for that plan. He’s pivoted on a toe-pick.
“The option to go to Vancouver was a possibility, along with Canton,” says Chan. “It was between the two. One was easier to accomplish logistically.’’
It is just a short off-ramp from Detroit to Canton, and Chan had too much on his mind for a major existential overhaul while acquiring and learning fresh programs and trying to focus on basic training. “I felt like I would have been playing catch-up this season if I had moved to Vancouver.’’
The harsh reality is Chan has been playing catch-up ever since he returned to competitive skating after a 16-month sabbatical following Sochi, where he failed in his life-long quest to win gold, settling for silver behind Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu. His furlough from the skating universe — skydiving was among the activities he pursued — coincided with a sea change in the men’s discipline. While the veteran Spaniard Javier Fernandez, under the tutelage of Brian Orser in Toronto, nailed his second consecutive title in 2016, a whole bunch of teenagers have been knocking sharply at the door and reeling off quads by the fistful: China’s Jin Boyang, Japan’s Shoma Uno (first to land a quad flip in competition), U.S. phenom Nathan Chen.
Chan may still be unmatched in artistry and component scores — his superb craftsmanship — but we are apparently in a reprised era of jumping flash. A couple of quad toes just doesn’t cut it anymore. And even those had become hold-yourbreath moments for Comeback Chan.
Intriguingly, the American Chen, just 17 years old, has likewise thrown in his hat with Zoueva this season. The jumping savant landed two quads in his short program last season and a whopping quartet of Qs in his long. Chen won the B-tier Finlandia Trophy earlier this month. Chan was second. In Canton — Chan and Johnson had already set up camp there be- fore Splitsville — it’s Chen who has been schooling the eight-time Canadian champion.
“I think he saw how well he and I go along,” says Chan of Chen’s drift towards the Zoueva stable, after originally planning to use her only as a choreographer. “It really made it a fun environment, mixed with the competitiveness of the ice dancers. We help each other on the ice. There’s competition between the two of us but it’s very much friendly and helpful.”
It’s the teen who is clearly pushing the envelope and, however in good sportsmanship, Chan’s buttons. He watched with admiration and some envy as Chen effortlessly landed quad Salchows in training, a jump that Chan anticipates debuting at Skate Canada. The American’s quad arsenal includes flips, toes and Lutzes.
As Chan told Canadian Press recently: “When Nathan goes out and does a quad — and I’m working on my quad Sal — he does one and I’m like, ‘Jesus, I can do that’. He’s young and talented and has that ferociousness. And it’s very contagious.” The jumping benchmarks moved significantly in Chan’s absence, more than he had expected.
“Coming back into competitive skating from my year off, these guys were all doing two quads in the short and three quads in the long. It was a bit of a shock. Best way to describe it is frustration, coming back into a situation where the bar had been lifted so high. It was frustrating to see that at every event. Now, with Nathan, seeing him every day, I feel a little more used to it. It also motivates me.”
Chan has never lacked for motivation. But he’s no longer the brightest star in the men’s firmament. He wants that glitter back.
On the eve of Skate Canada, Act III at least, it’s time for Chan to be or not to be a master of skate-craft again.