Chan Might Be The Man

Patrick Chan could be on the verge on some history at the world junior figure skating championships.
Chan won the short program today in Oberstdorf, Germany, posting a personal best score of 64.10 points. That's a little more than three points higher than he scored at the NHK Trophy senior Grand Prix series event in December.
He placed sixth in his world junior debut last year.
“I'm very happy with my program today,” said the Ottawa-born Chan, 16. “I'm keeping my cool. I can't celebrate yet because I still have the free skate, but I'm very grateful to have been able to accomplish such a feat in the short program.”
Chan, who is considered perhaps the brightest prospect in Canadian men's skating, holds a 2.43-point lead over China's Jinlin Guan (61.67), while Takahito Mura of Japan stands fourth (61.16).
Another Canadian, Kevin Reynolds of Coquitlam, B.C., stands fourth (59.52). Reynolds beat his old personal best by more than five points.
If both Canadians somehow wind up on the podium, it would be a stunning result. Since the junior worlds started 31 years ago, Canadian men have won only four medals. Three of them came in the first three years of the event, all of which were held in Megeve, France: Brian Pockar (bronze), 1976; Daniel Beland (gold), 1977; and Dennis Coi (gold), 1978.
The last Canadian man to win a medal in this event: Mark Ferland, who earned a silver medal in 1984 in Sapporo, Japan.
“This is one of the best results after a short program by Canadian men at a world junior championship,” said Skate Canada CEO William Thompson.
The third Canadian man in this year's event, Joey Russell of Labrador City, NL, stands 12th (53.89). He also notched a personal best score.
The free skate final is on Thursday.

Vancouver Calling ...

If you've been waiting to line up tickets for the 2008 BMO Financial Group Canadian championships in Vancouver ... well, your wait is about to end.
All-event packages for the event go on sale Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. ET.
Prices are $175 and $150 for the week, and can be purchased over the phone (604-280-4444) or online from TicketMaster (www.ticketmaster.ca).
The 2008 nationals run Jan. 16-20 at Pacific National Exhibition, which will also be the figure skating venue for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
Call this your opportunity for a sneak peek.
For Vancouver, it's the fifth opportunity to host Canadians. The last was in 1997. The city also held the world championships in 2001.
Also worth noting: It's gone back to being a five-day nationals with the elimination of the senior qualifying rounds (which will now be a part of the East/West Challenge. We're hearing that event is likely headed back to the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Ont., in December).

It Ain't Over Until It's Over

Used to be a time — and not that long ago — when it was easy to separate the contenders from the pretenders heading into a free skate.
It was this simple: Top three, have at it for the medals.
The rest of you ... well, thanks for coming out.
Not anymore.
The men’s and women’s finals at the Four Continents Championship offered the latest evidence that — as that old saying goes — it ain’t over until it’s over.
Start with the men’s free skate on Friday night. Evan Lysacek of the U.S. found himself in fourth place after the short program, 10.68 points behind leader Jeffrey Buttle of Canada. But Lysacek skated the lights out in the free skate final in Colorado Springs (most notably, landing a quad, even if it wasn’t the cleanest landing) and wound up on top of the podium when all was said and done.
Final scores: Lysacek, 226.27; Buttle, 223.96.
(the three-time Canadian champ, it should be noted, went quadless and botched a triple Axel).
His training buddy, Christopher Mabee, had the third-best free skate and jumped up five spots to finish fifth.
Fast forward to today and the women’s free skate final. No surprise seeing that reigning world champion Kimmie Meissner won the gold. But the American teen had to rally from a sixth-place finish in the short program.
Granted, Meissner was only 4.11 points in arrears of short program winner Joannie Rochette of Canada. But this is the kind of leap that would have been virtually impossible under the old 6.0-based system.
With a 172.75-point overall total, though, Meissner had more than enough to slide past American compatriot Emily Hughes (166.60) and Rochette (165.90).
Worth noting: Had Rochette been able to match her ISU personal best free skate score of 118.26 (recorded at Skate Canada in Victoria), the gold would have been hers.
Meissner wasn’t even the biggest mover among the women. Canada’s No. 2 entry, Lesley Hawker (a.k.a. Mrs. Doherty), turned in a fine season-ending skate (she’s not on Canada’s world team) to rocket up from 16th after the short to a seventh-place final standing (Fumie Suguri's withdrawal accounted for one of those spots).
No matter where you sit, you’ve gotta love this kind of volatility. The skaters know they’ve still got a shot at the podium if the point gap isn’t too wide. And there’s more drama for the fans.
Good for the skaters, good for the fans ... isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

Dance Fever

There's a delicious duel for global ice dance supremacy already brewing.
And we're still a month away from the Tokyo world championships.
Yes, I'm talking about ice dance.
And no, this isn't a misprint.
Consider what's gone on at the two major competitions that act as table setters (although not necessarily predictors) for the world championships. Two weeks ago, reigning world ice dance champs Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski finished third at the European championships in Warsaw. Knocking them off were gold medallists Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France, and the newest Russian sensations, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who took the silver.
The Bulgarians were third in all three phases of the event. Domnina and Shabalin won the free dance, while the French were tops in the compulsories and the original dance.
Now, there's tonight's result in Colorado Springs, which saw Canadians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon recover from a stumble in the original dance (that knocked them back to second) to take the gold in a sizzling battle with Americans Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto.
To build the intrigue a little more, let's line up the scores (and you can do that now with the current system) that the Fab Five posted at the two major competitions.
Europeans: Delobel/Schoenfelder, 199.47; Domnina/Shabalin, 199.16; Denkova/Staviski, 193.73.
Four Continents: Dubreuil/Lauzon, 198.59; Belbin/Agosto, 196.98.
In other words, one misplaced step here or there, and you can go from first to fifth in a hurry.
So yes, it's looking very much like race for the 2007 world crown is — wait for it — wide open.
And when's the last time we could say that about ice dance?
Yes, ice dance.

A Pair With Heart

Sometime very soon, we’re thinking, the fates of figure skating just have to leave Jessica Dube alone.
Seems like the poor girl’s run of bad luck is never ending.
The latest — and perhaps scariest — evidence of that came Thursday night at the Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs. The petite (she’s 4-foot-11) and sweet 19-year-old from St. Cyrille de Wendover, Que., was cut badly when the skate blade of her partner, Bryce Davison, smacked her in the face (just below the eye) during side-by-side camel spins.
If you’ve seen the photos of Dube lying on the ice with a trail of blood beside her, you also no doubt noted the look of horror in Davison’s face.
Yes, it was that bad.
Dube was kept in local hospital overnight after undergoing surgery for the gash across her left cheek and nose. International Skating Union medical advisor Jane Moran called it a “significant laceration.”
Now the question becomes whether Dube and Davison, the newly crowned Canadian pairs champions, can recover physically and — perhaps more important — mentally in time to skate at the world championships in Tokyo next month.
Given their recent past, don’t bet against it.
Last season, Dube was involved in a serious car accident about six weeks before the Canadian championships in Ottawa. She suffered a sprained wrist that had the couple wondering whether they’d be able to be ready to skate at the Civic Centre (Dube’s knee injury had wrecked their chances at Canadians the season before. They withdrew after the short program).
But not only did they show up in the nation’s capital, they skated well enough to land Canada’s second pairs berth for the Turin Olympics. Then went out and posted the country’s top pairs finish (10th) in Italy.
Fast forward to the current season. Dube needed knee surgery back in September, which kept the couple off the ice for about a month and forced them to play catchup (again) for most of the fall.
Somehow, Dube and Davison got it together in time to go out and win their first Canadian senior title in Halifax.
The lesson in all of this: If you wager against these two, you’ll lose.
Big time.
Nothing, it would appear, can keep them down for long.

Time To Seal The Deal

Here we go again, Joannie Rochette.
Time to put the lesson of Calgary to use.
The three-time Canadian women’s champion finds herself on top of the heap after Thursday’s women’s short program at the Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs.
If the 21-year-old from Ile-Dupas, Que., can maintain that spot after Saturday’s free skate, she’d claim her most significant international triumph yet. And an enormous dose of momentum heading into the world championships in March in Tokyo.
The deal is anything but done, though. With 56.60 points for a short program that, outside of a step out on the front end of her planned triple flip-triple toe combination, was top notch, Rochette posted the score of the night. But she’s got plenty of company nipping at her heels.
American Emily Hughes is a mere 1.26 points behind Rochette. Even reigning world champion Kimmie Meissner of the U.S., who’s down in sixth spot, remains in hailing distance of Rochette, just 4.11 points back.
In other words, Rochette is going to need another quality skate on Saturday just to ensure a podium spot, let alone the gold.
For Rochette, the position should look familiar. At the 2006 world championships, she found herself in first place after the qualifying rounds. It was hardly expected and it showed in the short program: Rochette made two major errors that all but finished her medal hopes.
She vowed then that she’d learned something new about pressure, that it would make her a better skater in the future if/when the situation presented itself again.
Well, it has now.
Time to see whether Rochette has indeed learned how to close the deal.

At The Four Front

Looks like the Four Continents Figure Skating Championship might finally have come of age.
Scan the entry list for the annual event — which begins later today in Colorado Springs — and you’ll see a world champion or medallist in every single discipline. That’s a far cry from the days (not so long ago) when Four Continents was filled with what you’d call a lot of ‘B’-list entries.
No more.
With a nearly two-month gap between Canadian and U.S. nationals and the world championships, Four Continents is the perfect place for skaters to keep sharp for the ultimate test at the end of March in Tokyo.
So it is that, with just two exceptions, Canada’s team in Colorado Springs will mirror exactly the one headed to Japan next month. Vancouver’s Mira Leung has chosen to take a pass on the event (former Canadian champ Cynthia Phaneuf of Contrecoeur, Que., takes her place), while surprise Canadian ice dance bronze medallists Kaitlyn Weaver of Houston, Tex., and Andrew Poje of Kitchener, Ont., will instead head to the world junior championships Feb. 26-March 4 in Oberstdorf, Germany (Vancouver’s Lauren Senft and Leif Gislason of Winnipeg become Canada’s third dance entry at Four Continents).
The quality of the overall field means Canada will be in tough to bring home the raft of medals it’s earned in the past. Expect Montreal’s Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, last year’s world silver medallists, to claim the ice dance gold. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of London, Ont., are good bets to join them on the podium.
Olympic bronze medallist Jeffrey Buttle, who showed at last month’s Canadian championships in Halifax that he’s back in form, rates as the men's favourite this week (Worth noting: Christopher Mabee of Tillsonburg, Ont., won the silver medal in this event a year ago, when he posted all his current ISU-best scores).
Three-time Canadian women’s champ Joannie Rochette of Ile-Dupas, Que., has some serious work to do to reach the podium against a field chock full of top U.S. (world champ Kimmie Meissner, Emily Hughes, Alissa Czisny) and Japanese (Miki Ando, Fumie Suguri) foes.
In pairs, new Canadian champs Jessica Dube of St. Cyrille de Wendover, Que., and Bryce Davison of Cambridge, Ont., face two Chinese teams with world championship pedigree (Qing Pang/Jian Tong and Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao), along with new U.S. champs Brooke Castile and Benjamin Okolski and former American champions Rene Inoue and John Baldwin.
The more interesting question: How will Valerie Marcoux of Gatineau, Que., and Craig Buntin of Kelowna, Que., rebound from being dethroned as Canadian champs in Halifax? No place like here to start making amends.
The ice dance compulsories get the competition started this afternoon, followed by the pairs and men’s short programs. The women get rolling on Thursday.

As Good As It Gets

Another Skate Canada Junior Nationals.
One more medal for the Nepean Skating Club.
When Lisa Casselman and Ryan Behnia won the pre-novice ice dance crown on Friday night in Brampton, Ont., it extended a nice little run at this event for the west Ottawa club.
Last year, Brooke Paulin and Nathan Last earned a silver medal in novice pairs in Moncton, N.B.
In 2004, it was Mandy Valentine enjoying a golden moment in the novice women's event right at home at the Nepean Sportsplex.
The latest one, though, had to be the most thrilling.
Casselman and Behnia were fifth after he first compulsory dance (American Waltz), then moved up to third following compulsory No. 2 (Rocker Foxtrot). They made their big move to the top in the free dance.
Still, it was a nail biter. Check out the final overall numbers: Casselman and Behnia, 61.87 points; Quebec’s Marie-Philippe Vincent and Kevin Pierro, 61.29; Quebec’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Anthony Quintal, 61.13.
Three teams, separated by less than a point.
Doesn’t get much closer than that.
Casselman and Behnia were second-last to skate. But they had to wait out the performance of Vincent and Pierro before they finally knew.
That they’d gone from 10th a year ago to Canadian champs.
“Oh, my God. That was the first thing I said,” Casselman, 14, said on the afternoon after their triumph. “It was like ‘I can’t believe we actually did this.’ ”
Behnia, 16, was still overwhelmed by it all a day later.
“I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet,” he said. “It seems like such a big shock. We’ve been hoping for this all year, but I don’t think it’ll hit me until we get home.”
The young duo are in their sixth year together. They gave a hint of what might be possible at Junior Nationals back in December, when they posted the highest total score of any team at the East and West Challenges. But that was ancient history by the time they showed up at the Powerade Centre this week.
“You really can’t focus on that,” said Casselman. “You just have to put it behind you. This is a different competition, and anything can happen.”
Not that they hadn’t dreamed about what happened Friday night.
“We’ve been talking since the beginning of the year about how much we wanted to win nationals,” she said. “But it didn’t become real to us until (Friday) night. It’s one of those things that just hits you — you weren’t really expecting it, but you were wishing it would happen.”
Wish granted, you could say. After a few days of celebration, though, it’s back to work. The Canada Winter Games in Whitehorse await them early in March.
While many of the same teams they just skated against will be there, Behnia said “it’ll be a different atmosphere in a different place. It will feel like a mini-Olympics.”
But will it will like Friday night? That, my friends, will be tough to top.

A Mad Waltz To The Finish

There’s quite the battle brewing for the pre-novice ice dance medals at the Skate Canada Junior Nationals in Brampton, Ont.
And Lisa Casselman and Ryan Behnia of the Nepean Skating Club are right in the middle of it. Casselman and Behnia posted a score of 23.55 in Thursday’s compulsories to stand third behind a pair of Quebec teams — Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Anthony Quintal (24.70) and Marie-Philippe Vincent/Kevin Pierro (23.78).
Right behind Casselman and Behnia in fourth are another Quebec couple, Penelope Mondion and Benoit Gagnon (23.25).
That the Nepean duo are in the hunt for the medals shouldn’t be a surprise: They recorded the highest score of any duo at the East and West Challenges back in December. And they got stronger as the day went on Thursday, finishing fourth in the first compulsory and a solid second-best in the other.
We’ll know how it all shakes down later tonight — the free dance final is scheduled for a 5:55 start.
*** They spread the gold medals all around the country in Thursday’s juvenile finals. The new champs included B.C.’s Nam Nguyen (men), Quebec’s Roxanne Rheault (women, with an impressive 43.23 score), Saskatchewan’s Tara Hancherow and Paul-Romi Poulin (pairs), and Elisabeth Dyer and Tayor Dilley of Alberta (ice dance).
*** Nepean’s Sarah and Steven Clarke wound up fifth in juvenile dance, while Elizabeth Comeau of the Gloucester Skating Club placed ninth among juvenile women. Hillary DesRoches of Pembroke and Renfrew’s Spencer Yakaback were seventh in juvenile ice dance.

Taking A Bow

Spotted at the Ottawa Sports Awards dinner on Thursday night — ice dancers Allie Hann-McCurdy and Michael Coreno.
The reason? Hann-McCurdy, who spent five years training at the Gloucester Skating Club and still represents them, was on hand to receive the sport award for figure skating for 2006. The 19-year-old from Orleans earned the honour — which included a medal and certificate — in great part because of their efforts at last year’s Canadian championships in Ottawa (Coreno made the long drive from his home town of Delhi, Ont., to share the happy moment with his partner).
In only their second year together, Hann-McCurdy and Coreno won the junior ice dance crown (they’d been silver medallists the year before in London, Ont., the same season they reached the Junior Grand Prix final).
The awards circuit isn’t done yet for the promising duo, which finished eighth in their senior debut at the just-completed 2007 nationals in Halifax. On Feb.12, both will receive the B.C. Premier’s Athletic Award for their accomplishments during the 2005-06 season. Then they’ll be special guests at the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Countdown to 2010 luncheon.
Both skaters returned to their home towns — Hann-McCurdy to Ottawa, Coreno to Delhi — for some down time after the Halifax nationals. They tell me they’re headed back to Vancouver next week to begin planning for next season (they train at the B.C. Centre of Excellence in Burnaby under the tutelage of former world champ Victor Kraatz and his wife, Maikki Uotila Kraatz), when their goal will be a top-five finish (and national team berth) at the 2008 Canadians. No road trip necessary for them: It’s right in Vancouver at Pacific National Exhibition, which will be the venue for the Olympic figure skating competition in 2010.
A stage, Hann-McCurdy and Coreno will tell you, they’d dearly love to dance upon in three years time.

Medal Dance?

Will the Nepean Skating Club be in the medals again at the Skate Canada Junior Nationals?
Young ice dancers Sarah and Steven Clarke are certainly in position to challenge for the podium heading into today’s juvenile free dance final at the Powerade Centre in Brampton, Ont.
The Eastern Ontario Sectional champions stand fourth after Wednesday’s compulsory dances, but it’s a close, close fourth. After finishing fifth and third in the two compulsories, the brother and sister team posted an overall score of 21.98 points. That’s a mere 0.17 behind Jayden Rau of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., and Tyler Grant of Ingersoll, Ont., who currently hold down the bronze-medal position.
Alberta’s Elisabeth Dyer and Taylor Dilley hold a commanding lead with 25.43 points. Currently in second are Edna and Edberg Khong of Ajax, Ont. (22.57).
If the Clarkes climb onto the podium, they’ll follow in the footsteps of Nepean clubmates Brooke Paulin and Nathan Last, who were silver medallists in novice pairs at the 2006 junior nationals in Moncton, N.B.
All the juvenile medals will be handed out today. Here are the times for the free skate finals: pairs, 1:25 p.m.; men, 2:40 p.m.; ice dance, 4:25 p.m., and women, 5:40 p.m.