Virtue no longer hitting the Wall
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. -- Canadian ice dancer Tessa Virtue is happy to be back training on the ice after missing the Grand Prix season because of an unusual injury that required surgery on both legs.
The 19-year-old skater from London, Ont., missed the Grand Prix Final in Goyang City, South Korea, last month. She and her partner Scott Moir of Ilderton, Ont., could very well have won it. As world silver medalists, their routines may be the most riveting of any dance team in the world right now. It's just that nobody has seen them yet.
She's been back on the ice for only about five or six weeks, and with the Canadian figure-skating championships next week, Virtue realizes she has a lot of work to do. Will they be ready?
After some difficulty in diagnosing the problem, doctors finally said she had chronic external compartment syndrome, an overuse injury that is most commonly found in young athletes who are involved in endurance sports.
She had surgery on both of her legs in September to relieve growing pressure in her tissues and underwent physiotherapy, too.
Virtue felt pain in her shins last year that used to bother her only when she did compulsory dances. The pain never affected her performance. She had a break after the world championships, but when their training intensified, so did the pain and it took on a completely different form from what she had felt before: an aching, tight feeling. The pain began to hold her back from training. And they had been training intensely, she said.
“It's more common than I thought it was,'' Virtue said of chronic external compartment syndrome. “So many factors go into it.''
Now Virtue has a plan for her comeback. “I have to be patient,'' she said. It's easy for skaters to get carried away when they train. “When I'm on the ice, I feel great,'' she said. Adrenaline takes over. She wants to go for it. Now she can't always.
On her first day back, Virtue skated for only 15 minutes, the second day, 30, the third, 45 minutes. Now she's up to 1½ hours on the ice. In a typical training day, she and Moir skate four or five hours.
“It's hard to look ahead,'' Virtue said. But she is thankful that she and Moir already have so many training miles under them. Moir had been off skating by himself while Virtue had been at home in London recuperating.
It was very difficult, she said, to miss the Grand Prix events. She and Moir withdrew from both Skate Canada in Ottawa and from the NHK Trophy in Japan, thereby eliminating them from the Grand Prix Final as well.
“It's been very tough, especially when Skate Canada rolled around,'' Virtue said. “We hoped to be there in Ottawa. I thought of not watching it, because I knew it would be tough.''
But she also wanted to watch her training mates, Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who have made great strides in their work this season. Davis and White won Skate Canada.
Because of the injury, Virtue and Moir haven't yet unleashed their new, innovative free dance to Pink Floyd. Choreographer Marina Zoueva knew it was the right vehicle for the team, because for one thing, Virtue has taken as much modern dance as she has ballet since she was four or five years old in London.
The movements to Pink Floyd are modern and slick and the lifts reflect the music. It's a far cry from the usual fare in ice dancing: tangos, Puccini, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi. It is, say those who have seen it, a masterpiece.
“We wanted them to show a different type of movement,'' Zoueva said. “I love it and everybody loves it. ... I try to do unique things. They have to try something new.''
“We're always trying to push the limits, and this gets us out of our comfort zone,'' Virtue said of Pink Floyd. “And that's good for us.''
Canadians confident heading into Grand Prix Final
Patrick Chan will leave for the Grand Prix Final next week, where he is the top qualifier, but he thinks he's had enough experience to fight off the pressure.
He's swept both of his Grand Prix events, at Skate Canada in Ottawa and at the Eric Bompard Trophy in Paris.
“I think I have a little bit of concern,'' said Chan Friday on a conference call, referring to his tough test next week against five other top qualifiers. “But I had the opportuity to have people gunning for me when I was in Paris.''
There, he faced 2007 world champion Brian Joubert, the Skate America winner, Takahiko Kozuka of Japan and his old nemesis from his junior world days, Alban Preaubert, twice a conqueror of countryman Joubert this year.
“I think I've gotten used to that, even if it's only been once,'' Chan said.
And he said he's become used to skating last, too, enduring long waits after the warmup. Because he led after the short programs at both Skate Canada and in Paris, he skated last at both Grand Prix events. And it's likely that he'll skate last in the short program at the Grand Prix Final.
Chan also qualified for the Grand Prix Final last year, when he was only 16 years old, and the youngest in the group by five years. This year it's a different story. Now he's a major contender for everything. And he's still only 17, buoyed by his stunning skating skills, edges and expression.
So how does he look at the event this time? Exactly the right way.
“I think it'll be another good practice, another good time to train myself mentally and physically,'' he said.
As for Canadian champion Joannie Rochette, she is setting no goals in her first Grand Prix Final. A couple of times in previous years, she's been an alternate, on the outside looking in, close but no cigar. Now after having won two Grand Prix events, she's put herself in elite category. Even medal category. And she's defeated a world champion this year.
“At the beginning of the season, I didn't want to set any goals,'' she said Friday. “I just wanted to be calm on the ice and be in the moment, which is what I did so far. For the final, I just want to do the same thing.''
Rochette said she's been very busy since she came back from her Grand Prix event in Paris.
“I've been going 100 miles an hour,'' she said.
She had a team project to do at school, and couldn't slow down. But she did get some good training in last week. She's doing a show on Saturday in Oshawa, called the Holiday Festival on Ice, squeezing it in before she flies off to Goyang City, South Korea next week.
She had to deal with a sore back, but she said it came from sitting too much, doing school work, something she's not used to.
She'll look at the Grand Prix Final, as being in the final flight at a world championship.
And she said she'll stick to her plan, remain calm on the ice and not worry about outside things.
It just might work.
Talk about paying your dues
The Junior Grand Prix series comes with its own set of charms, given that the athletes who compete in it are teenagers, sometimes very young ones, and traveling overseas for the first time in their lives.
Some of them had an eyeful this season, as the Junior Grand Prix went to four locations it had never been to before: Merano, Italy, Madrid, Spain, Gomel, Belarus and Capetown, South Africa.
Try Gomel. It was an eye opener for everyone. Skaters had to fly to Minsk, then board a bus for a five-hour ride. These days, cutbacks being what they are, the organizing committee doesn't pay for these bus rides any more: the skaters' federation does.
The bus ride was an adventure, especially the one back to Minsk on a Sunday morning. After about three hours, the driver pulled the bus to the side of the road, in the midst of a forest and indicated the passengers should get out of the bus. He pointed one way for the men, and the other way for the women. You just walked into the woods and had a pee.
“The men thought it was kind of a hoot,'' said Canadian team manager Louis Stong. “The ladies were perhaps not amused.''
There were no washrooms on the bus and no facilities in that five-hour trek to Minsk.
Gomel is only 70 kilometres from Chernobyl and you can imagine, within a week, the visitors absorbed as much radiation in a few days as they would have if they had taken an x-ray without protection.
The hotel? Old Soviet-style, not user friendly. It may look fine in the lobby, but once you mount the stairs to the room, it's another story. It's like staying in the Ukraina Hotel in Moscow. It looks exceedingly grand from the outside, and is actually a stunning landmark. But the room? Expect tatty window coverings, vertical blinds with two-thirds of the blinds missing, or shiny old fabric with a few rips. That's for starters.
And food was a struggle for the teens. Having a fresh cup of coffee in the morning was impossible. Fatty meat for breakfast. Breakfast looked like dinner: vegetables, (at least) sauerkraut, mashed potatoes. Don't even dream of toast.
But as poor as the people in the area were, they were exceedingly honest and kind, Stong said. A Japanese coach was close to tears, thinking she had lost her expensive Italian leather gloves, her favorite. But somebody had turned them in at the skating office, and she got them back.
One of the Canadian skaters left her purse, including her passport in the rink, but ran back into the seats and found it still sitting there, untouched.
“I think they are very hard-working people and they are frankly living in another time,'' Stong said. They drink openly in the streets. Still, Stong said he'd have no qualms walking the streets of Gomel late at night. Walking the streets in Moscow or Mexico City is another story.
The Holiday Inn in Mexico City wasn't pretty. And the city wasn't safe.
Mexico isn't exactly a figure skating hotbed. And it was a tough show. The rink was part of an amusement park, all housed in one building. There were no partitions separating the rink from a 10-lane bowling alley, a merry-go-round and a ride that swooped cars high up into the air, its occupants screaming at the top of their lungs.
These distractions all occurred during the Junior Grand Prix skating events. During the night of the original dance, a raging thunderstorm hit the building. The roof was made of tin. Music technicians had to jack the music up to its highest level so that skaters were able to hear the music. Forget having a conversation with your neighbour.
But it was a learning experience. “There were tons of distractions,'' Stong said. “If you were that type of person that was easily distracted, it would not have been good.''
If they could survive all of these things, they can survive anything.
The Junior Grand Prix Final is in Goyang City, South Korea from Dec. 10 to 14. It will be held for the first time in the same place, same time as for the Senior Grand Prix Final.
Men's skating back to normal?
The world order in men's skating seems to have reasserted itself in the short program at Cup of Russia.
After two disastrous performances in France, Brian Joubert, the 2007 world champion, won the short program on Friday, landed a quad-triple combination and finished with 86.10 points, the fourth highest score ever for a short. He must have been good.
Last week in France, Joubert got 73.75. Patrick Chan, who won the Paris event, got 81.39. However, although scores are supposed to be comparable from one competition to another, they often aren't. Different judges. Different places. Different times. Different reasons.
Plushenko has the highest short program score in history of 90.66, at the Turin Olympics.
Joubert did get the highest level of difficulty (four) for a flying sit spin.
“I was a bit tense,'' Joubert said. “It was difficult to forget the problems I've had in October and the bad performance from Trophee Bompard [in Paris].
He said he felt a little tense at each element and his goal was to skate clean. For the long program on Saturday, he said he'll let things roll.
Tomas Verner of Czech Republic is second, but he missed his quad, while world junior champion Adam Rippon of the United States was third with three level-four spins.
Imagine Sergei Voronov, who showed so much promise at Skate Canada, finishing last of 12 skaters in his home country.
Alban Preaubert, of France, who has defeated Joubert twice already this season, was only fourth behind Rippon.
The truth is, judges can do what they want with program component scores and with grade of execution of elements. This season, the ice dancing event has been a real contest for a change, with results changing markedly from original dance to free dance.
But at Cup of Russia, strange things always happen with Russian ice dancers. See if Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin – missing last year due to injury – and Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski, the world bronze medalists in their absence, get high levels of difficulty and very high grades of execution. Count the plus-three bonuses. It's at this competition that Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov of Russia used to get marks like rock stars.
Smith: Look out for the gluey stuff
Where would the Canadian figure skating team be without pair skater Craig Buntin?
He's an interesting chap, this guy who has gone through six previous partners to find Meagan Duhamel. At the very least, Buntin's humour is infectious.
Thursday it became clear that the ice at the Palais Omnisport in Bercy, a suburb of Paris, wasn't the stuff on which dreams are made.
Patrick Chan, who won the men's short program, said during practice the ice was “pretty thin." And there were some patches of gluey stuff on the ice.
“A lot of the guy skaters said after practice, they got caught in the glue and if felt pretty funny,'' Chan said. “It's like skating through mud. It was only in certain sections of the rink. But it didn't bother me. Luckily, I think I didn't skate over one of those patches. But they made the ice a bit thicker, so day by day, it gets better."
Chan said he was ready for it, because the ice was just like that last year, when he staged an upset to win the Eric Bompard Trophy.
Apparently, there was a motorcycle racing competition at the venerable Omnisport with its cloud of red seats last Sunday, and organizers had to truck out loads of dirt on Sunday night. When they uncovered the ice, they found patches of dark colours on the ice sheet. This just wouldn't do for the figure skating world, so they decided to paint the spots white.
However, the paint didn't freeze. So by Thursday, the rink managers were still trying to work through this dilemma.
The first day, Buntin walked into the dressing room and exclaimed: “Isn't the ice great?'' The other pair skaters looked at him in surprise and said in various languages: “Not so much.''
Buntin said he had no complaints, but that if he misses a jump in the long program, he'll blame it on the ice.
But then, it shouldn't be surprising that a guy who lists as one of his hobbies riding a unicycle can handle any sort of ice conditions.
Sometimes skaters are apt to spoof the “Hobbies” part of their bios that they're required to hand in. Some skaters have some very strange hobbies. So is Buntin just kidding us?
No, he says. “I'm serious."
He's a card carrying member of the Unicycling Society of America (USA).
It really exists. It's based in Livonia, Mi., and stages and organizes unicycle races.
Buntin said he got into it a few years ago after getting the urge to try something new one day. “I had a little too much spare time on my hands,'' he joked.
He's also been known to don short track skates and attempt jumps in them.
Pair skaters are risk takers. Obviously.
Lineup forming to replace Buttle
William Thompson, Skate Canada's chief executive officer was right. He said in September, after the retirement of world champion Jeffrey Buttle, that there was a host of other Canadian men ready to step up to try to fill his shoes.
In the past couple of weeks, we've seen the marvellous Patrick Chan win Skate Canada with impressive presentation; Shawn Sawyer win the long program at Skate Canada ahead of a world bronze medalist, Even Lysacek; Ian Martinez land the first triple Axel of his career at Skate America; Joey Russell land his first triple Axel at Oktoberfest in Barrie, Ont., and Jeremy Ten, a national junior champion two years ago, earn a standing ovation after his long program at Skate Canada last week.
Now there's Vaughn Chipeur, the Calgary skater, known for having such power, he's constantly shredding his skating boots in quick order. He needs a sponsor to finance the boot buying, just to keep up with his jump torque.
At Cup of China in Beijing earlier today, Chipeur finished second in the short program, ahead of European champion Tomas Verner of the Czech Republic. Chipeur, of Calgary, scored the highest technical mark of the bunch and that's no surprise: He's gifted when it comes to jumping. He landed such a powerful triple Axel in the short program that one judge gave him a plus three (the highest possible and rarely seen) grade of execution. Three other judges gave him a plus two. The GOE is a bonus mark that swelled the base mark of that jump to 9.60 points from 8.20 for Chipeur.
Chipeur, ranked fourth in Canada, now third with Buttle gone, also landed a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, the first time he's landed a triple-triple combination. And his performance didn't end with the jumps. Chipeur got level fours of difficulty (the highest) for all three of his spins.
Kurt Browning choreographed Chipeur's short program. Chipeur has also been working with Gary Beacom, the enigmatic Canadian artist. If anybody can breathe presentation into Chipeur, it's Browning and Beacom.
Chipeur's presentation (program component) mark was only the seventh highest of 11 skaters at Cup of China, but he skated early in the rotation. That's not supposed to make any difference in the new judging system, but then the new program component marks have been used a lot like the old presentation or artistic marks in the old 6.0 system.
There's room around the world for men to step up, just like the Canadians, because there's yet another defection from the international men's ranks. Former world silver medalist Daisuke Takahashi of Japan injured himself in practice last Friday and had to withdraw from Cup of China, and tests are being done to see just how severe his injury is, and whether or not he'll make it to the NHK Trophy in Japan at the end of the month.
Top world men's skaters out with injury or retired: Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland, Buttle, Kevin Van Der Perren of Belgium, and now Takahashi.
There was a lot of excitement surrounding Verner last year, but he imploded at the world championships last March, and again at Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany early this season. He had more troubles in the short program at Cup of China. He was the only skater prepared to do a quadruple toe loop - triple toe loop combination in the short - a very risky proposition - and it didn't work out for him. He landed only a double toe loop and got only .30 points out of that effort.
Then other problems started, like dominoes falling. He valiantly tried to stick a double toe loop onto the end of a triple Lutz, but officials ruled the entire combination an invalid effort and he got no marks for it at all. That's because you can't repeat a solo jump, and he was repeating a double toe loop. If he hadn't tried to be so valiant and did only the triple Lutz, he would have at least got marks for that big triple.
And here's another rule. If the double toe loop ended up as being his solo jump, it's required to have footwork going into it, and because he changed his plans, it didn't. That little double toe loop at the beginning of his program got a minus three grade of execution, the lowest possible.
So the favorite to win the event ended up with the lowest technical mark (28.60) and the highest presentation mark (36.95). Should he have finished even fourth after his colossal miscues? Perhaps he was propped up a little on the presentation mark?
Chipeur finished with a technical mark of 43.80 and a presentation mark of 28.90, for a total of 72.70, a personal best for him. Verner is fourth with a total of 65.55.
Chipeur was defeated only by U.S. youngster Jeremy Abbott with 77.05 points. Abbott had a flawed landing on a triple flip, but landed a triple Axel as well as a triple Lutz - triple toe loop combination. Abbott also has a flair for presentation.
Jeremy Ten of Vancouver had another tough short program, falling on an underrotated triple Lutz, that was supposed to be part of a jump combination, and delivering a flawed landing on a triple Axel. Ten, however, has made great strides in his work, too, looking much more like a senior man now.
Smith: Skate fans get a bug in their ear
OTTAWA - There's nothing like having a bug in your ear.
At the Skate Canada Grand Prix event, it's a good thing.
This week, the Skate Canada organization unveiled a new multimedia device that allows fans sitting in the arena to hear live commentary on what they are watching. It's called Skate Bug, and once you've had the bug, you don't want to lose it.
The commentators are people like Olympic silver medalist Elizabeth Manley, and Skate Canada's chief executive officer William Thompson, who was also a judge at the Turin Olympics. How much better can you get than that? A high-level judge telling you what the skater does well or what he or she could improve?
Imagine Manley giving us the tidbit that the Russian skating coach here Anna Levandi is actually Anna Kondrasheva, who won a bronze medal at the 1984 world championships in Ottawa – against Manley.
Imagine Manley saying that Joannie Rochette's short program performance gave her goosebumps?
Skate Canada is also putting newly retired world champion Jeffrey Buttle to work too, considering he's not skating here, but he'll be commenting on ice dancing, not the men's event. Perhaps it would be a bit awkward for him to comment on his peers.
Anybody can text message their questions to the commentators, and they'll get an answer through Skate Bug. One of the stars in the commentating booth is the chatty Norm Proft, a former skater from Kurt Browning's era, whose humour is invaluable and gives the right touch. Debbi Wilkes, former television commentator and now director of marketing and communications for Skate Canada is another.
The first little glitch? On Saturday, Wilkes caught herself after saying that a Skate bugger had sent a message. “That didn't come out right,'' she said.
The bug idea first popped up at a European championship in Lyon, France several years ago. Former French skating star Philippe Candeloro came out with his own little system at the event, and he and his colleagues were tough-minded and brutally honest, holding nothing back, including negative comments about the new judging system.
Instead of squashing the idea, a few International Skating Union officials thought Candeloro might just have something there. Peter Krick, chairman of the Sports Directorate of the ISU, suggested it was a good idea for live audience participation.
He and Canadian Ted Barton, who also was involved in setting up the new judging system, contacted David Raith, the executive director of the U.S. Figure Skating association, who has a history in television. They began to test and experiment with ideas and equipment.
First of all, they used the Four Continents Championship held in Colorado Springs a few years ago to test the system with a limited number (200) of skating fans. Some off-duty technical specialists made comments on the live events. The response was overwhelming: 96 per cent of the users loved the idea.
And interestingly enough, a lot of the favorable comments came from men who had accompanied their skating-loving wives to the competition. They traditionally hated figure skating, Barton said. They'd head off to the bar until the event was finished.
But with the bug in their ear, they locked into the dramatic stories behind even the lowest-ranked skaters, the kid who perhaps was hooked up to intravenous a couple of days before the event, but faced the judges anyway.
“It put a whole new face on what the audience sees,'' Barton said. “This could attract people who don't like skating, and it also educates people on the new judging system.''
Barton said the text messaging is an extra add-on that will be key to the system's success, making it an interactive thing.
On Friday at Skate Canada, with more than 3,500 people in the audience, the Bug commentators got 90 text messages. Skate Canada sold 400 of the devices, at $20 a piece.
They will be able to use the same device at the Canadian championships in Saskatoon in January, and it's possible they'll work at the Four Continents in Vancouver in February. However, that will be VANOC's call.
It's the perfect answer to sliding television contracts, Barton said. (Just recently, the ISU for the first time ever, granted television rights to a member federation, rather than a television network, when it awarded rights to Skate Canada. This allowed Skate Canada to work with CBC to add coverage of all six Grand Prix events this season, as well as the European and Four Continents Championships to what CBC had already arranged to do: Canadian and world championships.)
Big thumbs up on this idea. Once again, Skate Canada is a trend setter, taking control of its fate.
Highest honour for Leigh
Esteemed Canadian coach Doug Leigh has received the ultimate coaching award in Canada: the Geoff Gowan Award for lifetime contribution to coaching development.
It's the highest honour a coach can receive from her/his peers, and it's not awarded every year.
Leigh was nominated for the award by Skate Canada and an awards committee of the Coaching Association of Canada chose him.
Leigh will receive the award at a special ceremony in Calgary on Nov. 7.
Leigh has coached for four decades and was a founding director of the Mariposa School of Skating, which is also linked to a secondary school in Barrie, Ont.
He has produced two-time Olympic silver medalist Brian Orser, three-time world champion Elvis Stojko and 26 other Canadian champions and 17 international champions.
His skaters have won more than 150 medals nationally and internationally, and count among them 17 world and Olympic titles.
He has coached at 26 world championships and six Olympic Games.
“Doug Leigh as built an admirable reputation that epitomizes the Geoff Gowan Award,'' said Jean-Marie De Koninck, chair of the Coaching Association's board of directors.
“Like Geoff, Doug is a dreamer, a builder, an innovator and an achiever,'' De Koninck said. “He has dared to do things that seemed impossible, like turning a small Ontario town into one of the most respected figure skating training centres in the world, where year after year, he has produced national, world and Olympic champions.''
Leigh is a positive thinker par excellence. Ask how he is on any given day, and he'll reply: “Amazing.'' There's no other answer for Leigh.
Orser was Leigh's first gem. He resisted all suggestions to move to Toronto for training and instead stayed with Leigh until he won a world title and two Olympic silver medals.
Rochette ready to rock
Big treat this frosty morning in Ottawa, watching three-time Canadian champion Joannie Rochette practice before the women's short program at Skate Canada.
She was simply astonishing.
One thing: her jumps. Throughout the entire practice, she was solid and sure of herself, doing a triple toe loop – step – triple Salchow combination several times, without a hitch. Ditto for her new triple flip – triple toe loop combination, the one she needs to be competitive with the top women in the world. Not a problem. Not even a doubt.
But what was also fabulous was Rochette's upper body movement: more flexibility, complexity, art. There must be a standing ovation somewhere for her footwork sequence down the middle of the ice, using her body the way she does. Stunning. Simply stunning.
So it's not just the Asian and the American women contending for an Olympic medal 15 months from now in Vancouver. Add Joannie Rochette's name.