All Right, We'll Call It A Draw

The champs face an uphill climb to run their streak to four.
But it isn't exactly a mountain standing in front of Valerie Marcoux and Craig Buntin.
Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison were the winners of the senior pairs short program tonight at the Metro Centre. But their edge over three-time Canadian champions Marcoux and Buntin is razor thin: 59.94 points to 59.01.
“It's within a point, so basically it's going to be whoever goes out there and does it Saturday (in the free program),” said Buntin, 26, of Kelowna, B.C. “So we're ready to go out there and do our jobs.”
The champs had it going last night until their bugaboo element of the moment — the throw-triple loop, which has been a bit of an albatross for them lately.
“I guess it's one of those things that's not working,” said Marcoux, 26, of Gatineau, Que. “This is four competitions in a row that I've missed it. I don't know what to tell you, but I know tonight we felt good out there.”
Said Buntin: “That element, for us, is just now maybe becoming a bit of a mental block. When we set it up, we got this feeling that 'we have to do this because we've missed it.' As competitors, you can never have that in the back of your mind. So we're going to do some work over the next couple of weeks to get that (thought) out of there and get this going, because it is consistent in practice.”
After going to the Turin Olympics and Calgary worlds together last season, the top two pairs have become rather friendly. They got a little too close in warmups: Buntin nearly collided with Dube and Davison as they flashed by him.
“I just warming up a double toe and I turned around and there were two skaters speeding at me. I have no idea where they came from,” said Buntin. “It happens. It was neither of our fault and we apologized.“
But, he quipped, “it would have been a different story if Bryce pulled my shirt over my head and started punching me hockey style.”
Uh-huh.
Both put themselves in solid position to head to another world championships together, in March in Tokyo. Their efforts in Calgary opened up a third pairs spot for Canada at these worlds and right now, Anabelle Langlois of Hull, Que. and Cody Hay of Grande Prairie, Alta., hold the lead in the chase for it.
Langlois and Hay skated a clean program and earned 55.36 points, about two better than the surprise fourth-place finishers, the brother-sister team of Kyra and Dylan Moscovitch of Toronto (53.34). St-Leonard, Que. based Utako Wakamatsu and Jean-Sebastien Fecteau are also in hailing distance at 52.48.

Leaders Of The (Younger) Pack

It's always been the natural order of things in the figure skating world.
You hold a Winter Olympics, then wait for the expected retirements to start rolling in.
Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon obviously didn't get the memo.
And to hear one of their young contempories tell it, nobody's the least bit unhappy that the four-time Canadian champions didn't pack it in to make way for the next generation.
“We're so lucky to have them,” said Tessa Virtue, 17, of London, Ont. “As amazing as they are on the ice, they're even more incredible off the ice.
“We really appreciate all their help and advice.”
Virtue and her partner, Scott Moir, would probably be celebrating their first Canadian senior title this week if Dubreuil and Lauzon had moved on. With a 34.98-point score for their Golden Waltz compulsory today, they were head and shoulders above the rest of the field.
But while others might suggest Virtue and Moir should be miffed that their turn is being put on hold by the No. 2-ranked team in the world, they say it simply isn't so. Even if Dubreuil and Lauzon are still there when the Vancouver 2010 Games roll around.
“People thought that we would be a little angry that they were staying,” said Moir, 19. “But we'll definitely be glad if they stay another four years. They're such great, great skaters and do such good things for our country.
“Our goal is to be world and Olympic champions someday. Whether it happens before they retire, we don't know.”
Dubreuil, 32, and Lauzon, 31, look at all the younger skaters battling the make their mark in the ice dance discipline and can't help but smile.
“We feel a little bit like parents,” said Dubreuil. “We know we're the veteran team here and we feel excited about what is under us.”
They'll be the champions for a fifth time by Sunday. With a 41.16-point compulsory score, that's pretty much assured. But they've got much bigger fish to fry before this season is over.
“Our goal this year is to win worlds, and everything we do is done in that regard,” said Lauzon.

Have Skates, Will Travel

Somewhere in Germany, a young woman with small feet — and we mean really small feet — is no doubt enjoying the use of a comfortable, well broken-in pair of figure skates.
At least Anabelle Langlois figures that what had to have happened to her custom made pride and joys, which still haven't caught up with her since her Lufthansa flight left Toronto on Nov. 21 for the Cup of Russia Grand Prix event in Moscow. Langlois watched them make their way along the luggage conveyor belt at Pearson Airport in T.O., and knows they got as far as Frankfurt.
After that ... well, it couldn't be a bigger mystery.
She's been to Russia and back. The skates — not to mention a bunch of jewelry and competition makeup, a national team track suit and several pairs of skating tights — long ago lost touch with her.
“I have no idea where my skates are,” said Langlois, 25, of Hull, Que. “I was looking at pictures from Skate America that I was signing (autographs on) and I was saying 'those are my skates, those are my skates that are gone!' ”
Lufthansa has offered to reimburse her $500 for her losses, but the skates alone are worth $2,700.
“That ($500) wouldn't even cover what was in my makeup case, or a (skate) blade,” said Langlois.
Ordinarily, you might think getting a new pair would be easy enough. But Langlois takes a tiny 3-1/2 skate size, and the pair she lost had to be custom made.
“I'm not very tall ... they don't come much smaller than me,” said Langlois, who stands a mere 4-foot-11. “I'd look really silly if I had big feet.”
“They're almost not there,” said Cody Hay, her pairs partner from Grande Prairie, Alta.
Fortunately, Jackson Skates was able to get Langlois a new pair, but not until they lost three weeks of training. Then there was the painful process of breaking them in — something Langlois normally starts in the spring, not a month before the Canadian championships.
“As much as I was trying not to build up any anger over this, when I had to break in the new ones ...,” she said. “Let me tell you, the first couple of blistering days and bruising days and weekends ... poor Cody had to deal with me.”
It certainly gave him a new perspective on pain.
“Any time I felt like complaining, I'd look at her trying to break in her skates and thought 'maybe this isn't the best time to complain,' ” said Hay, 23. “It helped me with my training, seeing what she was going through.”
Added Langlois: “One day, he tried to tell me his foot was hurting and just gave him this glare (think Barbara Fusar-Poli giving Maurizio Margaglio the death stare after their original program flop at the Turin Olympics) ... The skin on my feet was ripped, I had bruises all over my ankles.”
The boots fit fine now, and Langlois says she's well stocked again in the makeup department.
“Everybody gave me gift certificates for makeup for Christmas,” she said. “I was in Russia with nothing but the lip gloss in my purse. No mascara, no nothing ... it was very tragic.”
The latter line was followed with a laugh. Then again, with Langlois, it's always something and she's gotten pretty used to that fact.
“Someday, I'll write a book ... The Adventures of Anabelle,” she said. “I love drama.”
Sounds like a good read to me.
Hell, I'd make myself available to write it. You just can't make this kind of stuff up.

A New Beginning

Every time I walked past Amanda Billings at last year's world championships in Calgary, I couldn't help feeling a touch of sadness.
Not that Billings didn't have a blast playing volunteer at such a big event in her home town (she'll tell you she soaked up every minute of it). But you know, somewhere deep down inside, she wished it was her out there on the ice, living the biggest of dreams in the arena first made famous by the 1988 Winter Olympics.
The poor girl just never had a chance.
Billings showed up injured at the Canadian championships two months earlier in Ottawa, having badly sprained an ankle during a freak off-ice accident. The gutsy Albertan gave it a shot anyways, but the pain was too great after she endured the qualifying session. So up went the WD beside her name. Not to suggest Mira Leung wasn't a deserving world team member (with two-time national champ Joannie Rochette), but a healthy Billings certainly would have been a worthy challenger in Ottawa for both the Olympic and world teams.
It's with that backdrop that a smiling Billings talked yesterday about being happy to be back in the game again.
“It's just great to be injury free,” said Billings, 20, who finished fifth in yesterday's women's qualifying session to advance to Thursday's short program. “It was a whole different experience, not to have to be worrying about an injury in the back of your mind.
“Just to get back here was a great experience.”
One final women's qualifying note: Gatineau's Kim Caissy, a former Canadian juvenile and pre-novice champ, snagged the 14th of 15 available spots for the short program.

The Clouds Have Lifted

As I sit here at the first Canadians of a new quadrennial, I can't help thinking about how far this sport has moved beyond its darkest moment.
I refer, specifically, to the chill that surrounded the 2003 nationals in Saskatoon — and I'm not just talking about the -30C temperatures that greeted us on the Prairies for most of that week. It was the first Canadians after Salt Lake City 2002 and the worst judging scandal figure skating had ever seen (we'll spare you a recounting of the details of the Jamie Sale-David Pelletier mess, which has been told more than enough).
Anyways, let's just say not a lot of positive feeling was floating around Saskatoon that week.
Fast forward to this week and Halifax, where Canadians is getting a bright new makeover in terms of presentation. There's a flashy new logo and lots of buzz already about Vancouver 2010, which will be our first 'home' Olympics in 22 years.
Oh, yeah ... more spots for the world championships are at stake this week then we've seen in years. Three of everything except the women's discipline, which gets two. In other worlds, almost the largest team possible that will wear the red and white maple leaf in Tokyo in March.
Now that's something to shout about. And in a very good way, too.

NEWS AND NOTES

***Amelie Lacoste of Delson, Que., who finished fifth in the senior women's event a year ago, withdrew on the weekend. Lacoste has been battling a foot ailment for much of the season, which led to her dropping out of a scheduled Junior Grand Prix assignment in the Czech Republic in October. A few weeks before Christmas, she was hopeful she'd skate here in Halifax, but the injury clearly didn't respond in time.

***Kanata's Mandy Valentine, a former Canadian novice women's champ who's been battling injuries for much of the past two seasons, also dropped out of the senior event. She has been training in Vancouver with coach Joanne McLeod for much of this season.
As a top 12 finisher last year, Ashton Tessier of the Minto Skating Club was exempt from the qualifying round.
***Skate Canada will announce the site of the 2008 Canadian championships on Sunday, after the conclusion of this event. Expect a western venue, given that the last three nationals have been held in London (2005), Ottawa (2006) and Halifax.