Watch the video above: Expectations and pressure high for Canadian figure skating team at Sochi Olympics. Allison Vuchnich reports.
Star figure skater Patrick Chan is heading to his second Olympics. And this time, he intends to bring home a medal.
He’s currently the best in the world, earning three consecutive world figure skating titles, two Grand Prix Final championships and seven consecutive Canadian national championships. But at the moment, he has no Olympic medals in his vast collection.
The world champion admits he psyched himself out at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, earning a disappointing fifth-place finish. Since then, he’s worked on every aspect of his skating, including mental preparation.
“The mental state I want to be in going into the Olympics is to want to go to compete and want to skate as opposed to dreading the competition and being so nervous that you’re frightened to skate,” he said.
More: 16×9 profiles Patrick Chan
The 23-year-old says he’s matured since Vancouver – living on his own and making sure he takes one day at a time.
“I don’t have to look at everything with a microscope, just do what makes me feel good and trust my gut instinct to keep me happy,” he said.
All that training and preparation might help him make history by winning Canada’s first gold medal in men’s figure skating.
Holding onto the gold
Things are a little different for Canada’s ice dancing duo, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. As defending Olympic champions, they head to Sochi followed by high expectations.
“We know what to expect from an Olympic Games and we have – we’ve learned a lot in the last four years in competition and off the ice,” Moir said.
“It’s a lot of pressure. You know, Tessa and I always say we always put the most pressure on ourselves, but you know we really want this gold bad.”
Going back to the Olympics adds some stress, said Virtue, but “it all comes down to training.”
“The more prepared we are, the more our programs are in our bodies, the more we can trust ourselves. I think we’re in a really good position.”
And pressure can be a good thing for the pair, which has skated together for 17 years. “As an athlete that’s what you want,” Moir said. “You want the pressure as high as possible. You want the Americans to be really strong and we want to come out on top.”
Video: What does it feel like to jump, lift and throw like an Olympic figure skater? Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch show us with the help of a GoPro.
Olympic rookies
Canadian pair Meaghan Duhamel and Eric Radford will be skating in Sochi thanks to their third straight win at the Canadian championships and a third-place finish at the World Championships.
“We’re going to be 28 and 29 when we get to the Olympics and we’re just rookies, though,” said Duhamel.
Representing Canada has been a dream of hers since she was a teenager. “I’m training at this rink and I see a bunch of skaters wearing this jacket that said ‘Canada’ across the back,” she said. “And when I was 14 years old I said, ‘Wow, like, I want that jacket. I want to wear that jacket.’”
The pair will be skating to music Radford composed himself.
“I composed the short program and I composed it as a tribute to my coach, Paul Wirtz, who passed away in 2006,” he said. “Along with skating really well at the Olympics, it’ll be really kind of fulfilling for me to be able to kind of give back to him in that way.”
Pairs team Dylan Moscovitch and Kirsten Moore-Towers are also going to the Olympics for the first time. They placed second in the 2014 national championships behind Duhamel and Radford, and came in fourth at the 2013 World Championships.
Aside from the usual single men’s, women’s, pairs and ice dancing events, the brand new “team event” in Sochi this Olympics will give Canada yet another chance at a figure skating medal.
In the team event, one man, one woman, a pair and an ice dancing pair form each country’s team. Points are awarded for each skater/couple based on their ranking – 10 points for first, 9 for second and so on to 10th place. The team with the highest aggregate score wins.
The teams will be announced in Sochi beginning Feb. 5, but it’s likely Canada’s top skaters will be competing in the team event as well as their individual events.
With Canada’s wealth of talented skaters, expectations are high for an additional figure skating medal.
Note: This story originally misstated the scoring system for the team event. We regret the error.
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