Skate Canada continues in its quest to take over the world
Skate Canada bosses pleased with performances at world championships
TURIN, Italy - No matter what their competitive future holds, for Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, this season will be stamped in the history books as the finest ever by a Canadian ice dance duo.
Canada's newly minted ice dance stars wrapped up a brilliant undefeated campaign, Patrick Chan enjoyed some measure of redemption after a disappointing season, and Cynthia Phaneuf carried Canada's flag admirably in the absence of Joannie Rochette at the world figure skating championships.
Now, Skate Canada bosses head home thoroughly pleased with the team's performance in Italy, which capped not just this single season but four years of concerted focus on the Vancouver Olympics.
"It's been a great world championship," said Skate Canada CEO William Thompson. "Obviously to have Tessa and Scott come in and win a gold medal is tremendous. And Patrick to get himself back on the world podium is a big deal."
Virtue, 20, and Moir, 22, had a fairytale season - first Olympic gold, then their first world championship title. While the two haven't committed to competing next season, Thompson believes they will.
"I don't think anyone should read into (their waffling) at this stage," Thompson said. "They had a goal, they wanted to finish this season, then they have to sit and evaluate what they want to do next. They like to compete, they like to train, they're still young.
"At some point they're going to have to take a deep breath and really look back on these last two months, because it's been quick. I don't think they really realize what they've done."
Thompson said Canada's national skating organization would do pretty much anything for its two star skaters in the sport.
"Absolutely. Olympic and world champions - you can have your general rules, but at some point you put yourself into a different category," Thompson said. "Absolutely, we will be sitting down with them about what they need to continue and whatnot."
Virtue and Moir received additional funding heading into Vancouver through Own The Podium, which pumped millions worth of corporate and federal dollars into training Canadian athletes leading up to Vancouver. Mike Slipchuk, Skate Canada's high performance director, said the funding picture is foggy for the upcoming post-Olympic season.
"If that financial contribution is not there from Own The Podium, then we will do what we can at our end to keep that," Slipchuk said. "You don't want to have your top team, Olympic champions, have to quit because of $10,000 or something."
Chan, meanwhile, captured silver to help ease the disappointment of his fifth-place finish in Vancouver that came after he missed a good chunk of the season with a calf injury.
The Toronto skater plans to add a quad next season to what are already among the most difficult programs skated by any of the top men.
"His program with no jumps in it is more exhausting, more difficult, than just about anyone else out there. He's had a very different approach," Thompson said. "It's the hidden difficulty with Patrick that you can't never lose sight of - it's not just the jump, it's everything around it, the lead-up, the steps in, are so difficult."
Phaneuf finished fifth in the women's singles at the Palavela - easily the top international performance of her career. The 24-year-old from Contrecoeur, Que., has long skated in the shadows of Rochette, who won bronze at the Olympics just days after the death of her mom and then withdrew from the world championships.
"We really wanted her to be top-10. To have her come out and skate two clean programs at a world championships, get a good score, be up there, that's really exciting for us," Thompson said.
There were more reasons for Thompson to be optimistic about the team's future. Kevin Reynolds of Coquitlam, B.C., a last minute injury replacement for national silver medallist Vaughn Chipeur, was 11th in his world championship debut, while ice dancers Vanessa Crone of Aurora, Ont., and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ont., were seventh in only their second appearance.
"To see Kevin Reynolds put a world class score up, he made some waves this week," Thompson said. "Vanessa and Paul coming out, establishing themselves, a full tier up from where they were last year, that's the real success for us this week - a big improvement by the second entries from Olympics to worlds."
The one discipline of concern for Canada is pairs. Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison, world silver medallists in 2008, had hoped to salvage a disappointing Olympics, but instead had to settle for sixth, matching their finish in Vancouver. There are no promising young teams waiting in the wings, either.
"It is a struggle," Thompson said. "But the thing with pairs is it's another discipline that can come along very quickly. If you find the right match and put two people together - like Jamie (Sale) and David (Pelletier), bang. Two years later they're top of the world."
Slipchuk and Thompson took over a Skate Canada program in disarray following the team's one-medal performance at the 2006 Turin Olympics. The two say they had been so single-mindedly focused on a strong showing in Vancouver, they haven't had as much time to look at longterm development.
That starts now.
"Right now, it's been a half-measure of development, half-measure of good luck and a bit of fairy dust thrown in," Thompson said. "We know that we walked in and had some talented athletes and we were able to give them some tools. But at the end of the day it was coaches and athletes who did it and got us to this point.
"But now we don't think we're at the top of the world. We don't think we're a dominant nation. We have a lot of work to do in order to repeat this and that's what our goal is."
Canada won three medals at the 2008 world championships in Los Angeles, Chan and Rochette winning silver and Virtue and Moir finishing with bronze.
tl:dr: Canada is currently awesome at skating, plans to continue being so