Daleman learns to soar, and forgive, on painful journey
VANCOUVER— To look at Gabrielle Daleman is to marvel: This girl has got it all.
Beauty, with a hint of exotica — sloeeyed, thick raven hair almost to her waist. As physically strong and taut as a bow string. Exceptional talent as a figure skater who made the world podium last year at age 19, bronze to Canadian compatriot Kaetlyn Osmond’s silver. Apparently brimming with self-confidence.
But peel back the layers and there was also this: A girl bullied throughout much of her school years, mocked for her gym- nast-trained muscles. Hated (not too strong a word) because of the privileges extended to a pupil trying to juggle academics with training and competition. Ridiculed for a learning disability that made it difficult for her to read and write, though mathematics came easily. Taunted as ugly and freakish because she was distinct looking. All of it coalescing around a chronic eating disorder — methodically totalling every calorie consumed and then fiendishly working out to shed the same amount. Then, still unsatisfied, shedding twice the caloric intake of every meal and snack.
And then, just when she was feeling avenged — Look at me now! — very nearly on top of the figure skating world, in the spotlight, body-slammed by serious illness that required double surgery and, this past summer, three full months off the ice.
A bit of the career gauze was pulled away when Daleman imparted her antibullying message to the CBC before the 2017 worlds, a 41⁄ 2- minute video still available online. The rest of it was pulled off here Thursday, in a no-holds barred scrum with the media, as the Newmarket teenager — at least until Saturday, when she turns 20, coinciding with the women’s free skate final at the Canadian championships — was quick-time soliloquizing through a personal oral narrative.
A post-practice conversation had begun with Daleman explaining why she decided, halfway through the Grand Prix competitive season over the fall, to ditch her Gladiator long program and resurrect Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, which had served her so well in 2017.
“I listened to what my gut was telling me. I was the one who went up to my coach and said: This is what I feel. My gut and my heart told me that Rhapsody in Blue was my Olympic program and that I needed to go back.”
Just a couple of seasons ago, she would never have been so bold or so assured in the rightness of her choice. “A few years ago, the skater and the person I was wouldn’t have the guts to say: This is what I need.”
She is no longer that young teenager who merely looked like she had the world on a string, while hiding her doubts and myriad private issues, even while surrounded by an A-team of coaches and choreographers and sports psychologists.
“I’m more mature. I’m more confident, not only in my skating but in myself. That’s what I’ve struggled with in the past — self-love, selfconfidence. Speaking out about bullying, about my eating disorder, about my mental health has really helped me grow.”
Judy Goss, a sports psychologist at the Canadian Sports Institute (Ontario), has spent five years working with Daleman on her eating disorder and body-image obsession. “I was a gymnast so I have broader shoulders than most figure skaters,” explains the petite Daleman. At school, she’d wear long sleeves even in hot weather to cover his strong biceps. Her shape — and photographs of “Gabby” from age 6, 7, 8 show a youngster with astonishingly contoured muscles in her arms and legs — fed much of the bullying nastiness. “It was: You’re not pretty enough, you’re not graceful enough. Just a whole list of stuff why I shouldn’t be a skater. They told me my dreams were just dreams, they’ll never be a reality.”
Daleman tuned out the skepticism and cruelties, at least to the extent that she found a solitary peace at the rink, her good fortune to attend a Pickering school that had an arena; a school where her father Michael also happened to teach.
“During recess, during whatever time I had, if I just wanted to skate I had this rink. So I would have private time to do what I love and, honestly, that’s what I’m so grateful for.”
She is a tough cookie, if an exceedingly feminine one, with her sparkling long fingernails and the giggly pleasure she takes from new glittery skating costumes — “Stones! Sparkles!”
While climbing the ranks quite quickly — this is her sixth senior nationals; won the title in 2015, has four times placed silver — and with the eating disorder abated, she has come to love her strong body, and mostly forgiven her bullies. “I actually had some people who messaged me saying: I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it,” says Daleman of her CBC interview impact. “At the end of the day, some people do realize it and some don’t. You can’t control it. But I’ve had tons of people coming up to me saying they’ve spoken up because they’ve seen that video. So that’s really touching for me. Because nobody should go through that, it’s awful. Still to this day I can cry over it. But it’s a part of my life.”
That should have been, if not yet the happy ending — Daleman’s got a lot of skating years left in her — at least a safe and calm place to be, heading into an Olympic year. Uh-uh. There had been an abdominal ailment, unrelated to skating, just before worlds last March and relatively minor surgery to eliminate the problem.
Two months later, while on tour with Stars on Ice, the pain returned, more acutely. She tried to gut it out with the tour, with constant trips to hospital emergency. “It became hospital, show, hospital, show.” Finally, in agony during a tour stop in Calgary, she pulled the plug, returning to Toronto where she was rushed into the OR. She had a large abdominal cyst, infection and some endometriosis.
“They did ultrasound. There was a lot of fluid in my abdomen so they couldn’t see anything — that’s how much fluid was in there. I didn’t even know how bad it was until they showed me after and I said: That’s disgusting.’’
Surgery cleared everything out, but Daleman was forbidden from skating or training. So, for three months, she retreated to the family’s cottage near Parry Sound, where her father also owned a restaurant. “So, cottage, go for a swim, go eat, it was pretty great.
“I shut social media down, completely handed in my phone. I ended up reading a lot. Just stared at the water and became one with myself. Started doing yoga and just enjoying myself. I know people say surgery sucks, but I couldn’t have asked for anything better. For one, it definitely saved my life. Two, it made me realize what’s important, what’s not, what was toxic in my life, what’s not.
“It made me become a better me and I’m so grateful for it.”