Fans of figure skating, of which I am one, were treated to the performance of a lifetime on Sunday night. Patrick Chan was sublime. He was magic on ice. Media types quickly ran out of superlatives to describe his stunning performance. I am sure that every person in the stands and everyone watching at home felt that, for that moment in time, they were witnessing perfection.
The weekend also saw Cynthia Phaneuf regain her crown as our National Champion Figure Skater. She will be joined in Tokyo by Myriane Samson who took the Silver medal. Eric Radford and Megan Duhamel won a second place spot the World team after Dylan Moscovitch and Kirsten Moore-Towers took the Gold medal in Pairs.
Canadian skating crowns new king
http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Canadian+skating+crowns+king/4154512/story.html#ixzz1BzpclNm8
Patrick Chan blows minds and shatters records with his fourth-straight title
By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun January 24, 2011
Victoria
Now and then, in writing sports for a living, words are no match for the event.
Sunday was one of those days; because Patrick Chan wore out the thesaurus with a skate that anyone lucky enough to witness it at Victoria's Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre will never, ever forget.
Twice a world silver medallist without a quadruple jump in his arsenal, the just-turned 20-year-old from Toronto landed two quad toe loops, the second in combination with a triple toe, and laid down what was unarguably the greatest skate ever by a Canadian to win his fourth-straight national senior men's crown at the BMO Canadian figure skating championships.
Brian Orser? Kurt Browning? Elvis Stojko?
All great on any number of days; none as great as Chan was, on this one.
Completing 14 revolutions in the air in the first 55 seconds of his free skate was but a fraction of the tale, because Chan never had anything like a wobble and had fully a minute at the end -- after all the tricks were done -- to play. And no one plays like he does, putting on a display of pure skating skills to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantasia that must have been, even to the most casual observer, breathtaking to behold.
Don't take our word for it.
"He came to the booth and I said, 'What the hell was that?'" said Browning, the four-time world champion and a brilliant blade-man in his own right, who was doing commentary for the CBC and had no qualms about calling Chan's skate historic.
"In the short program, we were trying to think of new adjectives, because we figure he's got to plateau out at some point. But maybe not. The vulnerability, yet the control, a rock star but still a kid. Wow.
"If this is a year ago, he's Olympic champion."
The numbers, even taking home cooking into consideration, bear that out.
Chan's free skate score -- a whopping 197.07 points -- was better than the two-program combined scores of anyone in the field except the two other skaters who joined him on the podium, silver medallist Shawn Sawyer of Edmundston, N.B., and third-place finisher Joey Russell of Labrador City, N.L.
His combined score of 285.85 broke his own personal best by 26 points and shattered Daisuke Takahashi's three-year-old world record of 264.41 by almost as ridiculous a margin.
"It wasn't at the 300 mark, so I guess 300 is possible," Chan said, and he might not have been kidding. "But I just looked at it as if I was at worlds, and Daisuke was going to skate after me."
Sawyer, who quit skating after missing the Olympic team last February and decided to give it one more try in July, had received a rousing ovation for an inspired, pristine skate to music from Alice in Wonderland, reeling off triple jumps at will and emoting to the audience, then donning a Mad Hatter topper that a fan handed him, just before Chan's turn to skate.
"That was an out of body experience. I have no clue what happened," said Sawyer, who's been on multiple national teams. "Usually I have my key words I say out there. Today: total blank, blank, blank."
But the cheer for Chan, when he finished, was chill-inducing.
"That was the reaction I wanted at the Olympics, that's what I dreamed about every night when I went to bed. And I finally got it," said Chan.
"It wasn't exactly the same situation, but I'm going to take it, and that's going to be one of my most memorable moments."
It's hard to believe he could get any better, but that's the goal.
"There's more to come," he said. "Forget about technically. Technically I think I've got it covered, although maybe the quad flip -- people in Colorado are telling me I could easily do it, the way I land the triple. I guess I trust them enough to try it, so I think I'll strap on the harness again this summer.
"I think what I can do this season is just take this confidence, and bundle it up, and take it with me on the plane." Specifically to Tokyo, for the world championships in March, where, if he does what he can do, he may be untouchable.
Coquitlam's Kevin Reynolds, who had three quads planned for his long program in hopes of making the Canadian team for the Four Continents and world championships, had a disastrous day, missing two of them and falling awkwardly during a footwork sequence en route to a fourth-place finish.
"I'm incredibly disappointed," he said. "Coming in, I wanted to be second place, and not being on the Four Continents and world teams was not even a second thought. Now, I'm in fourth ... and I don't know what my future in skating is, after this."
Actually, because Chan is skipping Four Continents, Reynolds makes the team as the third entry, a consolation prize of sorts.
"Obviously it was tough after the short program. The nerves showed at the beginning. It would have been an okay performance and I think I'd have done all right if it wasn't for that last fall in the choreo step sequence that took a lot of energy out of the program."
It was one of the few sour notes on a day that had Skate Canada officials grinning from ear to ear.
"I've been coming to these things for a long time, and I've seen some of the greatest skaters ever," said the organization's high performance director Mike Slipchuk, a contemporary of Orser, Browning and even Elvis.
"I can safely say I've never seen anything like that skate of Patrick's."
ccole@vancouversun.com
The weekend also saw Cynthia Phaneuf regain her crown as our National Champion Figure Skater. She will be joined in Tokyo by Myriane Samson who took the Silver medal. Eric Radford and Megan Duhamel won a second place spot the World team after Dylan Moscovitch and Kirsten Moore-Towers took the Gold medal in Pairs.
Canadian skating crowns new king
http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Canadian+skating+crowns+king/4154512/story.html#ixzz1BzpclNm8
Patrick Chan blows minds and shatters records with his fourth-straight title
By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun January 24, 2011
Victoria
Now and then, in writing sports for a living, words are no match for the event.
Sunday was one of those days; because Patrick Chan wore out the thesaurus with a skate that anyone lucky enough to witness it at Victoria's Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre will never, ever forget.
Twice a world silver medallist without a quadruple jump in his arsenal, the just-turned 20-year-old from Toronto landed two quad toe loops, the second in combination with a triple toe, and laid down what was unarguably the greatest skate ever by a Canadian to win his fourth-straight national senior men's crown at the BMO Canadian figure skating championships.
Brian Orser? Kurt Browning? Elvis Stojko?
All great on any number of days; none as great as Chan was, on this one.
Completing 14 revolutions in the air in the first 55 seconds of his free skate was but a fraction of the tale, because Chan never had anything like a wobble and had fully a minute at the end -- after all the tricks were done -- to play. And no one plays like he does, putting on a display of pure skating skills to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantasia that must have been, even to the most casual observer, breathtaking to behold.
Don't take our word for it.
"He came to the booth and I said, 'What the hell was that?'" said Browning, the four-time world champion and a brilliant blade-man in his own right, who was doing commentary for the CBC and had no qualms about calling Chan's skate historic.
"In the short program, we were trying to think of new adjectives, because we figure he's got to plateau out at some point. But maybe not. The vulnerability, yet the control, a rock star but still a kid. Wow.
"If this is a year ago, he's Olympic champion."
The numbers, even taking home cooking into consideration, bear that out.
Chan's free skate score -- a whopping 197.07 points -- was better than the two-program combined scores of anyone in the field except the two other skaters who joined him on the podium, silver medallist Shawn Sawyer of Edmundston, N.B., and third-place finisher Joey Russell of Labrador City, N.L.
His combined score of 285.85 broke his own personal best by 26 points and shattered Daisuke Takahashi's three-year-old world record of 264.41 by almost as ridiculous a margin.
"It wasn't at the 300 mark, so I guess 300 is possible," Chan said, and he might not have been kidding. "But I just looked at it as if I was at worlds, and Daisuke was going to skate after me."
Sawyer, who quit skating after missing the Olympic team last February and decided to give it one more try in July, had received a rousing ovation for an inspired, pristine skate to music from Alice in Wonderland, reeling off triple jumps at will and emoting to the audience, then donning a Mad Hatter topper that a fan handed him, just before Chan's turn to skate.
"That was an out of body experience. I have no clue what happened," said Sawyer, who's been on multiple national teams. "Usually I have my key words I say out there. Today: total blank, blank, blank."
But the cheer for Chan, when he finished, was chill-inducing.
"That was the reaction I wanted at the Olympics, that's what I dreamed about every night when I went to bed. And I finally got it," said Chan.
"It wasn't exactly the same situation, but I'm going to take it, and that's going to be one of my most memorable moments."
It's hard to believe he could get any better, but that's the goal.
"There's more to come," he said. "Forget about technically. Technically I think I've got it covered, although maybe the quad flip -- people in Colorado are telling me I could easily do it, the way I land the triple. I guess I trust them enough to try it, so I think I'll strap on the harness again this summer.
"I think what I can do this season is just take this confidence, and bundle it up, and take it with me on the plane." Specifically to Tokyo, for the world championships in March, where, if he does what he can do, he may be untouchable.
Coquitlam's Kevin Reynolds, who had three quads planned for his long program in hopes of making the Canadian team for the Four Continents and world championships, had a disastrous day, missing two of them and falling awkwardly during a footwork sequence en route to a fourth-place finish.
"I'm incredibly disappointed," he said. "Coming in, I wanted to be second place, and not being on the Four Continents and world teams was not even a second thought. Now, I'm in fourth ... and I don't know what my future in skating is, after this."
Actually, because Chan is skipping Four Continents, Reynolds makes the team as the third entry, a consolation prize of sorts.
"Obviously it was tough after the short program. The nerves showed at the beginning. It would have been an okay performance and I think I'd have done all right if it wasn't for that last fall in the choreo step sequence that took a lot of energy out of the program."
It was one of the few sour notes on a day that had Skate Canada officials grinning from ear to ear.
"I've been coming to these things for a long time, and I've seen some of the greatest skaters ever," said the organization's high performance director Mike Slipchuk, a contemporary of Orser, Browning and even Elvis.
"I can safely say I've never seen anything like that skate of Patrick's."
ccole@vancouversun.com
