Ajax figure skater going for another gold at national championships

Nam Nguyen has spent most of his life on the ice, but the joy he gets, he says, when he steps onto it to skate has never gone away.

“Why I’ve been around for this many years is you can never get enough of that feeling,” said the 20-year-old athlete, who started skating nearly 16 years ago. “The feeling of the wind blowing across your face when you’re skating fast and the satisfactory feeling when you land a jump.”

The professional figure skater from Ajax, Ont., has won gold at every national level of skating throughout his career, and he once again has his eye on the top prize at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in the new year.

He reigned as champion at the nationals in 2015, when he won in the senior men’s category. But that was the year Patrick Chan, the most decorated male figure skater in Canadian history, did not compete.

Chan won the senior men’s title at the Canadian championships 10 times — a record — and now that he has retired, Nguyen wants to take home gold again.

But, just don’t compare him to Chan.

Nguyen stands out, his coach says, from other skaters because of how well he emotes during his performances.

“His ability to connect and perform to the audience is something that’s very rare when combined with the demands of what we do on the ice now,” said Robert Burk, who has been coaching him for nearly a year.

Nguyen took home gold at the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic in Salt Lake City earlier this month, and before the nationals in Saint John, N.B., in January, he’s aiming to come out on top at the Skate Canada and Skate America competitions next month.

Although Nguyen spends several hours a week training, Burk says he likes to encourage athletes he coaches to have lives outside of the sport. Nguyen is a part-time student at York University taking health studies.

But skating is his world, for now, Nguyen says, and only for now.

“Looking ahead to the next Olympics in Beijing in 2022,” he says, “that’s something that’s a little too far for me to think about right now. I would much prefer to take it year by year.”