Skate Chanada News: Chan ready to showcase his quadruple jump
WTF AM I DOING POSTING A PCHAN ARTICLE? THIS ONE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL AMUSED ME THAT MUCH.
Fasten your seatbelts. Patrick Chan’s quadruple jumps are about to erupt this week at Skate Canada. When the 19-year-old figure skater from Toronto takes to the ice in the men’s short program Friday night at the K-Rock Centre, he’ll show off his first one in a major competition.
Odds are he’ll land it. Despite all the talk last year and the speculation about whether he’d try it on for the Olympics, it’s now his best jump, his trump card. Last year, he talked about how you could win without a quad, and American Evan Lysacek won Olympic gold without one. Chan still believes it, but now it’s go big or go home.
This week, he plans to attempt a quadruple toe loop not only in the long program, but in the risky short program, where if you miss an element, you’re in a deep hole in the standings.
Coach-choreographer Lori Nichol said they are also contemplating two quads in Chan’s long program, but for now there’s just one. He’s doing various transitional steps into it, making it even more difficult.
“We’ll see what it is like in a pressure competition setting and then make a call on what we’re doing for the future,” Nichol said. Doing a quad in practice is entirely different from doing a quad in competition, she said.
So why didn’t he do one last year, when he needed it, when perhaps he could have improved upon his fifth-place finish in Vancouver? He wasn’t ready. He had an injury to contend with. He had just changed coaches.
“Everything was so hectic,” Chan said. “I was doing it on the harness a lot, but it wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t clicking. I didn’t want to risk it and take a bad fall.”
But with four years until the Olympics, this is the time to try out new tricks. If he wipes out this week, it won’t affect the Sochi Games. He started training in earnest over the summer, with coach Christy Krall pushing him. It clicked one day after talking to dance coach Kathy Johnson, who comes to his training centre in Colorado once a month. Do it from your core strength, she said. Don’t push with the arms so much.
It worked. Chan did three in a row. It’s still harder for him to do a triple Axel, a jump with 3 1/2 rotations. He can set up a triple Axel, then have it go awry. If he sets up a quad, it flies just about every time.
“It’s just like you’re in a vortex,” Chan said, his eyes shining with excitement. “It’s really fast, a lot more compact than a normal triple. For us high-level skaters, a triple begins to feel like a double. But a quad toe is like a whole different level. It’s like a whirlwind almost.”
He now understands what 2006 Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko was talking about when he insisted that quads are so important, you shouldn’t be an Olympic champion without one.
Now, Chan thinks it’s “kind of weird” when a skater doesn’t put a quad in his short program even though he’s known for doing them. He said he was shocked that world champion Daisuke Takahashi won the NHK Trophy event last week without a quad, and he’s been doing quads longer than Chan has been doing triple Axels.
(LOL PCHAN NOW YOU'RE CRITICIZING DAISUKE FOR NOT DOING A QUAD IN HIS SP!?)
But, Chan reasons, if he doesn’t do it, he’ll be overtaken. In Colorado, where he trains, he sees skaters from the Junior Grand Prix circuit trying quads every day. He skates with American Brandon Mroz, and it’s duelling quads beneath the mountains.
“I’m so excited to be putting it out there after everybody has been talking about it,” Chan said.
Here's a nice run-through of his LP posted by highheartbeats. The commentators say he landed a 4T-3T during Javier Fernandez's run-through. Oda also landed a 4T-3T. Kevin Reynolds did a 4T-3T-3LO and rumors say he might do a 4LO!
Skate Canada is looking likely to become such a Quad Fest :D
Click to viewTEAM CHANADA TYFYT (&TY to whoever made this wonderful GIF)
