A Brian Joubert & Patrick Chan Timeline
This is meant to be a very brief introduction to Brian Joubert and Patrick Chan and their interactions. Which is why there are no pictures (though that's Patrick in my icon, and Brian will be in the icon I use for my next post) and very few video links, as otherwise this would have taken forever and been incredibly long. Still, I hope it's useful. If you have any further information about their interactions that I've missed (or messed up), please let me know! I would love to make this as complete as possible.
Brian Joubert (born 9/20/84) is a French figure skater who started competing internationally in the 1999-2000 season at the junior level. He switched to senior competitions in the 2001-2002 season and competed in the Olympics for France that year (he placed 14th; he was 17 years old at the time). Brian has a sensitive, family-oriented personality; he can be quite arrogant, yet he seems to get along with other skaters fairly well. He strikes me as something of an introvert. His mother is the stage mom to end all stage moms -- up until this summer, he had pretty much categorically refused to move away from his hometown of Poitiers to train. Admittedly, I can't necessarily blame him for not wanting to leave his adorable bulldog, Blade, and his pretty, pretty fish, not to mention the huge number of stuffed animals that populate his room. Still, his relationship with his mom seems to be exceedingly close, and it's unclear if that's been a positive or negative effect on his career overall. He's been through a number of coaching changes, also, with the primary players being Veronique Guyon (who "discovered" him; they seemed to get along well in his early career, but had some serious dysfunction over the years), Jean-Christophe Simond (with whom he had the greatest successes, including his undefeated year), and Laurent Depouilly (who was his most recent coach as well as the coach he had for his excellent 2003-2004 season, where he took 1st at Euros and 2nd at Worlds).
When Brian was in his teens, he would discuss how girls liked his body and his face, and he liked the attention. However, around 2005 he had a brief relationship Lætitia Bléger, who was Miss France 2004, and their relationship ended rather badly (she insinuated that he was gay, he took her to court over it). He also dated Italian figure skater Valentina Marchei around 2008 (it seems like they started earlier than that -- there's a 2004 article on goldenskate that states: "For a lucky charm, she has a small pink bear from the Europeans Championships, naming it Brian, since she skates with Joubert, the new European champion, in the summer," and I've seen at least one French that seems to be saying that Brian and Valentina started dating late 2005). Anyway, something about these experiences made him rather wary of relationships -- he has stated that he has trouble trusting women these days. I am sure that girls still like his body and his face, though, because damn, the boy man is hot.
Patrick Chan (born 12/31/90) is a Canadian figure skater who started competing internationally in the 2004-2005 season at the junior level. He made the transition to the senior level internationally in 2006-2007 with the Grand Prix events that year, though he didn't compete in senior Worlds until the 2007-2008 season, which was his first entirely senior season. It went quite well, though his 2008-2009 season was perhaps his most successful to date -- 2nd at Worlds and 1st at Four Continents and at two Grand Prix events. Patrick is... young. He's only 19 right now, and that definitely shows. He has a sort of teenager-y brash arrogance sometimes, though it could be argued that he just says what he thinks a lot, and is a little awkward when saying it, so things sound even worse than he means them to. Basically, he's awkward and sometimes goofy and sometimes overly serious and sometimes really excitable and sometimes his words trip over themselves when he talks and sometimes he trips on nothing when off the ice... he's super adorable and sometimes annoying and I've gotten to the point where I mostly just find all really endearing.
Patrick is a second generation Chinese-Canadian who speaks English, French, and Cantonese at least semi-fluently (my impression is that he primarily speaks English but his French is quite good in a French-immersion-school way, and I've heard that he has said his Cantonese accent isn't very good, but he's likely enough of a perfectionist that that could mean anything). He has had his own coaching change gauntlet after his first coach, Osborne Colson, died in 2006. He worked with Don Laws after that, before summarily dropping Laws (who didn't seem very happy about it) and switching to Lori Nichol and Christy Krall in January 2010. There's some speculation that Patrick was intrigued by the idea of doing at least some training in Colorado Springs, which is one of the centers of figure skating training in the US right now. Frankly, it would probably be good for Patrick (and for all figure skaters, really) to have more friends.
As far as I can tell, Brian and Patrick first encountered each other at the Trophee Eric Bompard 2006, which was during Brian's undefeated year. It was Patrick's first go at the Grand Prix series, he placed 5th.
Their next encounter was a year later, at the Trophee Eric Bompard 2007. Brian had to withdraw from the competition because of the flu. Patrick got 1st.
That same season, at Worlds 2008, Brian placed 2nd behind Jeffrey Buttle and Patrick placed ninth. It was Patrick's first senior Worlds. Apparently Brian's parents separated around this time; the two years between Worlds 2008 and Worlds 2010 were especially volatile ones for Brian. After Worlds, Brian makes a comment to the press that he's disappointed that Jeff hadn't done a quad during his winning programs. (Brian is a very vocal long-time advocate of the importance of the quad to the sport, and has been for a long time.)
2008-2009 is a very exciting year for their interactions. At the Trophee Eric Bompard 2008, Patrick got 1st, Brian got 4th. (Takahiko Kozuka takes 2nd, while Alban Preaubert, also of France, beat Brian to 3rd by less than two points.)
At the Grand Prix Final that year, Brian was 3rd in the short but had to withdraw before the free because of back problems. Patrick got 5th place, despite being the first qualifier because of his two wins (Skate Canada as well as TEB).
Then, everything blew up. The day before Worlds began (3/23), Patrick slammed Brian for saying that he was disappointed Jeff won Worlds 2008 without a quad -- he really went off on him at length and called him a sore loser. It was quite the impressive expression of vitriol. The next day (3/34), Brian expressed surprise at Patrick's comments, but didn't fan the flames much. The day after that (3/25), they both skated their short programs, Brian ended up in 1st and Patrick in 3rd (there was apparently some controversy about Brian's sp scored as 1st place). During the post-sp press conference, they very publically and somewhat awkwardly bury the hatchet. In the end, Patrick got 2nd, while Brian got 3rd after a disappointing free skate.
At the first ever World Team Trophy, which capped out that year, Brian got 2nd and Patrick got 4th, though as teams, Canada ended up with 2nd and France got 4th.
In the most recent season (2009-2010), Brian and Patrick actually had no overlapping assignments until the Winter Olympics, where they both had disappointing performances, though Patrick's 5th was probably less painful than Brian's disastrous 16th.
They both redeemed themselves at Worlds, though, with ending up in the same places at in 2009 but probably with somewhat different emotions attached -- Patrick got 2nd and Brian got 3rd. During the post-sp press conference that year, a reporter asked Brian a question about the quad and how it feels being behind people who didn't do a quad, only he said it in a more complicated way and had a bit of an accent, so Brian apparently had a hard time following the question. Brian turned towards Patrick, who immediately translated the question into French. There was much laughing! It was adorable. Kurt Browning roughly translates back into English how Patrick phrased the question in this post-Worlds 2010 interview with Patrick. In that interview, Patrick also says, and I quote (as faithfully as I could decipher): "First of all, our relationship between me and Brian is, i think has gone a long ways this competition, i'm so, i was, i wanted to go up to him and tell him, it was such a great job after such a disappointing Olympics, i just wanted to congratulate him, i haven't had the chance yet, but i'm really happy to see him happy again." (Remember when I said that Patrick is a bit awkward and his words tend to trip over themselves sometimes... yeah. It's charming, okay!)
They did see each other again, in April at Festa on Ice in South Korea. The guy who designed the costume for Patrick's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" program tweeted that Brian, Patrick, and Tomas Verner were playing Wii baseball backstage.
Which I can't help but hope means that they've gone from indifference all the way through the animosity and ended up at least something like friends. Because I'm a sap. :)
Brian Joubert (born 9/20/84) is a French figure skater who started competing internationally in the 1999-2000 season at the junior level. He switched to senior competitions in the 2001-2002 season and competed in the Olympics for France that year (he placed 14th; he was 17 years old at the time). Brian has a sensitive, family-oriented personality; he can be quite arrogant, yet he seems to get along with other skaters fairly well. He strikes me as something of an introvert. His mother is the stage mom to end all stage moms -- up until this summer, he had pretty much categorically refused to move away from his hometown of Poitiers to train. Admittedly, I can't necessarily blame him for not wanting to leave his adorable bulldog, Blade, and his pretty, pretty fish, not to mention the huge number of stuffed animals that populate his room. Still, his relationship with his mom seems to be exceedingly close, and it's unclear if that's been a positive or negative effect on his career overall. He's been through a number of coaching changes, also, with the primary players being Veronique Guyon (who "discovered" him; they seemed to get along well in his early career, but had some serious dysfunction over the years), Jean-Christophe Simond (with whom he had the greatest successes, including his undefeated year), and Laurent Depouilly (who was his most recent coach as well as the coach he had for his excellent 2003-2004 season, where he took 1st at Euros and 2nd at Worlds).
When Brian was in his teens, he would discuss how girls liked his body and his face, and he liked the attention. However, around 2005 he had a brief relationship Lætitia Bléger, who was Miss France 2004, and their relationship ended rather badly (she insinuated that he was gay, he took her to court over it). He also dated Italian figure skater Valentina Marchei around 2008 (it seems like they started earlier than that -- there's a 2004 article on goldenskate that states: "For a lucky charm, she has a small pink bear from the Europeans Championships, naming it Brian, since she skates with Joubert, the new European champion, in the summer," and I've seen at least one French that seems to be saying that Brian and Valentina started dating late 2005). Anyway, something about these experiences made him rather wary of relationships -- he has stated that he has trouble trusting women these days. I am sure that girls still like his body and his face, though, because damn, the boy man is hot.
Patrick Chan (born 12/31/90) is a Canadian figure skater who started competing internationally in the 2004-2005 season at the junior level. He made the transition to the senior level internationally in 2006-2007 with the Grand Prix events that year, though he didn't compete in senior Worlds until the 2007-2008 season, which was his first entirely senior season. It went quite well, though his 2008-2009 season was perhaps his most successful to date -- 2nd at Worlds and 1st at Four Continents and at two Grand Prix events. Patrick is... young. He's only 19 right now, and that definitely shows. He has a sort of teenager-y brash arrogance sometimes, though it could be argued that he just says what he thinks a lot, and is a little awkward when saying it, so things sound even worse than he means them to. Basically, he's awkward and sometimes goofy and sometimes overly serious and sometimes really excitable and sometimes his words trip over themselves when he talks and sometimes he trips on nothing when off the ice... he's super adorable and sometimes annoying and I've gotten to the point where I mostly just find all really endearing.
Patrick is a second generation Chinese-Canadian who speaks English, French, and Cantonese at least semi-fluently (my impression is that he primarily speaks English but his French is quite good in a French-immersion-school way, and I've heard that he has said his Cantonese accent isn't very good, but he's likely enough of a perfectionist that that could mean anything). He has had his own coaching change gauntlet after his first coach, Osborne Colson, died in 2006. He worked with Don Laws after that, before summarily dropping Laws (who didn't seem very happy about it) and switching to Lori Nichol and Christy Krall in January 2010. There's some speculation that Patrick was intrigued by the idea of doing at least some training in Colorado Springs, which is one of the centers of figure skating training in the US right now. Frankly, it would probably be good for Patrick (and for all figure skaters, really) to have more friends.
As far as I can tell, Brian and Patrick first encountered each other at the Trophee Eric Bompard 2006, which was during Brian's undefeated year. It was Patrick's first go at the Grand Prix series, he placed 5th.
Their next encounter was a year later, at the Trophee Eric Bompard 2007. Brian had to withdraw from the competition because of the flu. Patrick got 1st.
That same season, at Worlds 2008, Brian placed 2nd behind Jeffrey Buttle and Patrick placed ninth. It was Patrick's first senior Worlds. Apparently Brian's parents separated around this time; the two years between Worlds 2008 and Worlds 2010 were especially volatile ones for Brian. After Worlds, Brian makes a comment to the press that he's disappointed that Jeff hadn't done a quad during his winning programs. (Brian is a very vocal long-time advocate of the importance of the quad to the sport, and has been for a long time.)
2008-2009 is a very exciting year for their interactions. At the Trophee Eric Bompard 2008, Patrick got 1st, Brian got 4th. (Takahiko Kozuka takes 2nd, while Alban Preaubert, also of France, beat Brian to 3rd by less than two points.)
At the Grand Prix Final that year, Brian was 3rd in the short but had to withdraw before the free because of back problems. Patrick got 5th place, despite being the first qualifier because of his two wins (Skate Canada as well as TEB).
Then, everything blew up. The day before Worlds began (3/23), Patrick slammed Brian for saying that he was disappointed Jeff won Worlds 2008 without a quad -- he really went off on him at length and called him a sore loser. It was quite the impressive expression of vitriol. The next day (3/34), Brian expressed surprise at Patrick's comments, but didn't fan the flames much. The day after that (3/25), they both skated their short programs, Brian ended up in 1st and Patrick in 3rd (there was apparently some controversy about Brian's sp scored as 1st place). During the post-sp press conference, they very publically and somewhat awkwardly bury the hatchet. In the end, Patrick got 2nd, while Brian got 3rd after a disappointing free skate.
At the first ever World Team Trophy, which capped out that year, Brian got 2nd and Patrick got 4th, though as teams, Canada ended up with 2nd and France got 4th.
In the most recent season (2009-2010), Brian and Patrick actually had no overlapping assignments until the Winter Olympics, where they both had disappointing performances, though Patrick's 5th was probably less painful than Brian's disastrous 16th.
They both redeemed themselves at Worlds, though, with ending up in the same places at in 2009 but probably with somewhat different emotions attached -- Patrick got 2nd and Brian got 3rd. During the post-sp press conference that year, a reporter asked Brian a question about the quad and how it feels being behind people who didn't do a quad, only he said it in a more complicated way and had a bit of an accent, so Brian apparently had a hard time following the question. Brian turned towards Patrick, who immediately translated the question into French. There was much laughing! It was adorable. Kurt Browning roughly translates back into English how Patrick phrased the question in this post-Worlds 2010 interview with Patrick. In that interview, Patrick also says, and I quote (as faithfully as I could decipher): "First of all, our relationship between me and Brian is, i think has gone a long ways this competition, i'm so, i was, i wanted to go up to him and tell him, it was such a great job after such a disappointing Olympics, i just wanted to congratulate him, i haven't had the chance yet, but i'm really happy to see him happy again." (Remember when I said that Patrick is a bit awkward and his words tend to trip over themselves sometimes... yeah. It's charming, okay!)
They did see each other again, in April at Festa on Ice in South Korea. The guy who designed the costume for Patrick's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" program tweeted that Brian, Patrick, and Tomas Verner were playing Wii baseball backstage.
Which I can't help but hope means that they've gone from indifference all the way through the animosity and ended up at least something like friends. Because I'm a sap. :)