Lysacek won't enter U.S. Championships

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Dispute with federation keeps skater's comeback on hold

Evan Lysacek with his 2010 Olympic gold. (Chicago Tribune photo)

Globetrotting by Philip Hersh

8:26 a.m. CST, November 22, 2011

Evan Lysacek has decided not to enter January's U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Responding late Monday night to a text message in which I noted the entry deadline was Wednesday and asked if he were going to enter, Lysacek said, "Unfortunately, no I'm not."

The reigning Olympic men's figure skating champion had told me in late October he would skate at nationals  if the contractual dispute between him and U.S. Figure Skating could be resolved.

New TV format to be unveiled at Canadian championships

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BEVERLEY SMITH

Globe and Mail Update

Published Friday, Nov. 18, 2011 12:17PM EST

Last updated Friday, Nov. 18, 2011 12:19PM EST

Television audiences will get a boost from a new scheduling format for the Canadian Figure Skating Championships to be held from Jan. 16 to 22 in Moncton, N.B.

Skate Canada will condense all the action of three senior disciplines into one show on Saturday night that will allow the CTV network to show the final groups only from the women’s, ice dancing and pairs events.

The men’s event goes on Sunday afternoon on Jan. 22 in a separate time slot.

Cynthia Phaneuf switches coaches

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BEVERLEY SMITH

Globe and Mail Update

Published Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011 8:54AM EST

After a disappointing Grand Prix season, two-time Canadian figure skating champion Cynthia Phaneuf is switching coaches.

The 23-year-old skater from Contrecoeur, Que., is moving to Toronto to train with coach Brian Orser at the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling club where her choreographer David Wilson is also based. Wilson has shaped Phaneuf’s career from the beginning and he is her mentor.

Phaneuf will start on Monday at the club
.

Injured Joubert to miss figure skating Paris GP

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English.news.cn 2011-11-16 09:05:15

PARIS, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The French ice sports federation (FFSG) said on Tuesday that former world champion Brian Joubert of France will miss the Paris ISU Grand Prix figure skating event because of injury.

Brandon Mroz lands historic quad lutz

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Updated: November 12, 2011, 4:36 PM ET
ESPN.com news services

SAPPORO, Japan -- Brandon Mroz knew he could land this jump. There wasn't video of it two months ago in Colorado and it didn't come at a major competition, but it was a legitimate jump all the same.

This time, the 20-year-old American nailed the quadruple lutz at the NHK Trophy on Saturday, the first to do so at an international competition.

"I'm excited to get it done in an international competition," Mroz said. "Getting another jump done is awesome for generations of skaters to come."

Regina skater closes is on medal for Japan

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Regina skater closes is on medal for Japan

BEVERLEY SMITH

The Associated Press

Published Friday, Nov. 11, 2011 2:29PM EST

Last updated Friday, Nov. 11, 2011 2:30PM EST

A skater from Regina has found himself in second place in the pairs event at the NHK Trophy in Japan, the fourth of six Grand Prix of figure skating events.

Mervin Tran, a son of refugees from Viet Nam and Cambodia, started playing hockey as a youngster in Regina, but now he’s in line to win a figure skating medal – for Japan.

Tran started out as a singles skater in Saskatchewan, but moved to Montreal in July of 2007 to skate pairs with Japanese skater, Narumi Takahashi, who had been looking for a pair partner through Canadian coach Richard Gauthier.

Although Japan has had powerful singles skaters, both men and women, it has never had strong pair teams. Takahashi and Tran became only the second Japanese pair skaters to win an International Skating Union championship, when they won a silver medal at the 2010 world junior championships. Last year, they became the first Japanese pair team to win the Junior Grand Prix Final in Beijing.

Russian dynamo claims gold at Skate Canada

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BEVERLEY SMITH

Mississauga, Ont. — Globe and Mail Update

Published Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 6:26PM EDT

Last updated Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 9:31PM EDT

She’s tiny, a Russian upstart, a prodigy, a marvel and very very young.

Elizaveta Tuktamisheva of Russia took a wild big step into the international spotlight on Saturday when she won the gold medal at the Skate Canada in only her first appearance at a senior international event.

Battling a nine-hour time difference from home and admitting to a bit of jet lag, Tuktamisheva’s youth overcame all, apparently, admitting to a tiny bit of nerves, but you wouldn’t know it. She recognizes there is pressure at home to excel before the Sochi Olympics, looming in 2014, and there is pressure on her for her already stellar career as a junior international skater. But Tuktamisheva says she just doesn’t think about it, hides any knee-knocking and charges on. She steps up to a microphone like an old pro. She speaks English rather well.

Patrick Chan wins Skate Canada title

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Patrick Chan wins Skate Canada title

BEVERLEY SMITH

Mississauga, Ont.— Globe and Mail Update

Published Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 9:31PM EDT

Last updated Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 11:27PM EDT

World champion Patrick Chan knows that success lies with rhythm, finding patterns in his steps and patterns in his breathing.

On Saturday night, at Skate Canada he struggled to find his rhythm in a long program that is so complex that a foot wrong here or there could send the whole thing crashing like tipped dominoes.

Moir, Virtue crush Skate Canada field

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Moir, Virtue crush Skate Canada field

BEVERLEY SMITH

Mississauga, Ont.— From Monday's Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011 9:50PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011 11:17PM EDT

Canada doubled its medal count on Sunday afternoon at Skate Canada International in ice dancing, the ethereal figure skating discipline that is now one of the country’s trump cards.

The key? Perhaps figuring out the rather new uplifting rule in ice dancing. Last season, the International Skating Union ruled that audiences should not be tortured any more with mournful, cheerless, funereal, slow music. No more bursting-into-tears or dying-on-the-ice routines for the ISU judges. Better to leave the ice with sunny faces than furrowed brows.

To read the complete article go to
http://www.thestar.com/sports/figureskating/article/1078363--dimanno-pioneer-dancers-fresh-and-sassy-as-ever

DiManno: Pioneer dancers fresh and sassy as ever

October 30, 2011

Rosie DiManno

Ice dance gold medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada perform their free dance at the Skate Canada International figure skating competition Sunday in Mississauga. They danced to Funny Face.

Paul Chiasson/THE CANADIAN PRESS

They could have danced all night.

And still have danced some more . . .

Hold it: wrong music, wrong movie. Not My Fair Lady — though she is — butFunny Face: totally right and utterly befitting as yet another gorgeous ice dance showcase for Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, now channelling Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.

The team’s new free dance number was introduced on the Grand Prix circuit Sunday to thundering approval from the audience at Mississauga’s Hershey Centre, a standing ovation, and typically stratospheric scores.

Another title added to the growing pile for Canada’s Olympic gold medallists and 2010 world champions. But not Skate Canada victors from a year ago — which they watched from the stands, sidelined by Virtue’s shin surgery.

Constant reinvention is what keeps this team fresh and sassy, in a skating discipline where rule restraints stifle innovation. Yet they manage, year after year, to pull out the never-before-seen and breathtaking as pioneering dancers on blades: sensuous, playful, interpretive, athletic, the whole seamless package.

Russian teen Tuktamisheva turning heads at Skate Canada

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Published On Fri Oct 28 2011

• 
  

Elizaveta Tuktamisheva of Russia performs her short program in the women's competition during the Skate Canada International figure skating competition Friday in Mississauga.

PAUL CHIASSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS

By Rosie DiMannoColumnist

Here comes another Russian supernova, baby star.

Elizaveta Tuktamisheva is 14 — too young for eligibility at the European or world championships this year but old enough for Skate Canada, her first-ever assignment as a senior on the Grand Prix circuit.

At 12, the pre-adolescent was already being hailed as a prodigy, at least in the Russian media. For once, this wasn’t exaggeration.

The kid is sitting atop the standings following the women’s short program competition, with a look-at-me performance out of the season chute: a whopping 11.50 score on her opening triple Lutz-triple toe combination and smooth as silk in most of the mandatory elements if still a tad raw on the non-jumping components, the layback and circular step sequence.

Teensy in proportion, even by figure skating standards, and with a heart-shaped face, the miniature Tuktamisheva made a huge splash at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, racking up a score of 59.57 skating to a tango, clad in lacy black that was probably way too grown-up for her age.

She appeared not remotely nervous by entering senior ranks — after just one year in juniors — though claiming to feel anxious.

“Not relaxed,” Tuktamisheva insisted afterwards, comment limited by only minimal ability to speak English, a language she’s studying as a Grade 10 student. “After six elements, relaxed. Not very comfortable.”

Eric Radford: From Balmertown to figure skating’s big-time

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Published On Fri Oct 28 2011

By Rosie DiMannoColumnist

Balmertown is a speck on the map, six hours north of Thunder Bay by car, population 1,000.

“Probably smaller than this building,” observes Eric Radford, referring to the sprawling Hershey Centre in Mississauga.

Rugged place, his hometown, and not the easiest environment in which to grow up for a boy dreaming of becoming a figure skater.

Radford was just 13 when he bailed, first to Kenora, then Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto and back to Montreal, where he now trains at the Saint Leonard complex with pairs partner Meagan Duhamel.

Inner fortitude was required to withstand the teasing for a kid who was the only boy in Balmertown’s teeny figure skating club.

“It was pretty bad,” Radford admitted Friday after he and Duhamel zipped through theirConcerto de Aranjuez short program at Skate Canada, earning a personal best score of 62.37 and second place heading into Saturday’s long.

“I got bullied a lot. But the more success I had, the more respect I got.”

Macho men do figure skate

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October 28, 2011

MISSISSAUGA Bryce Davison has a message for Hamilton fathers. He’d never say it quite this bluntly, so we’ll translate for him.

Get into the 21st century.

The two-time Olympian, forced into premature retirement by a severe leg injury last year, is now a teaching professional at Hamilton Skating Club. And when he assumed his new duties this summer he got first-hand experience with a problem he had known only from a distance.

Young Hamilton males don’t figure skate.

“Hamilton Skating Club has one of the largest memberships in Canada, consistently over 1,000 the last four or five years. And out of that, in the prejuvenile and higher levels, there is just one boy. He’s a singles skater. There are no boys in pairs, none in dance. We do have a prejuvenile and a juvenile dance team, but they just started out.”

Davison, who was 15 years old when he left triple-A hockey in Ancaster to concentrate solely on figure skating, has made it his goal to change that.

World champions tumble at Skate Canada

Complete article can be found at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/more-sports/world-champions-tumble-at-skate-canada/article2218534/

World champions tumble at Skate Canada

BEVERLEY SMITH

Mississauga, Ont. — Globe and Mail Update

Published Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 10:51PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 11:12PM EDT

Javier Fernandez put Spain on the figure skating map on Friday night at Skate Canada by defeating two world champions.

Figure skating in Spain, the land of the bullfight? Hardly. Somehow, Fernandez has emerged from a country that probably doesn’t have as many rinks as there are in the block surrounding the Hershey Centre (eight rinks if you count the Mississauga Iceland across the street)

At his national championship, the men’s event attracts only about five or six senior men. Yet out of Spain has come Fernandez, who defeated Patrick Chan, holder of three world point records and the stylish former world champion Daisuke Takahashi of Japan too.