Top Canadian Couples Gearing Up for 2016 Skate Canada International

by Jacquelyn Thayer

Victory at Autumn Classic International served as a successful first step of a two-year comeback plan for Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. And shortly after, the team were back to work with free dance choreographer David Wilson.

“It was always part of the plan — you kind of create, try to make David’s vision come to life all summer long, and at some point we find we have to go back to the technical aspect and focus on that, which is something that [coach Patrice Lauzon] does so well,” said Moir of the lyrical to Sam Smith’s “Latch” and a cut from video game score Child of Light. “After ACI, it was necessary to go back to the artistic side of things, so we had David in actually two, three days right after that event, starting from the top again and making sure that we both understand and are staying true to what his vision is for the program and what the story is that we’re trying to tell.”

Entering next week’s Skate Canada International — their seventh time competing at the home Grand Prix — the team feels confident in the development. “We feel like this free dance, especially, has grown quite a bit, as much as it can in three weeks, so we’ll be interested to see if that shows on competitive ice,” he continued. “It’s the kind of thing, though, that we have to check in every once in a while, probably every month or every two months.”

It’s a similar process with short dance choreographer Sam Chouinard, while coach Marie-France Dubreuil serves to oversee the couple’s material on a day-to-day basis.

“With such a technically demanding sport, it’s so important for Tessa and I to keep checking in with the artistic side and make sure that that’s still being represented the way we want,” Moir concluded.

Indeed, the return process has entailed an overall adjustment between comfort and change.

“You know, there’s an interesting kind of dichotomy because it’s the element where we feel most comfortable — the rink is what we know and that is sort of our world,” said Virtue. “And yet because we’re learning so many new things and we’re changing so much of our technique and just trying to make some great strides, it’s a little bit foreign in that we’re sort of back to ground level and trying to climb back up again.”

And change is occurring at all levels. For those of us who closely monitor ISU biographies, the switch revealed a few days ago from Ilderton Skating Club, Virtue and Moir’s career-long club of affiliation, to the Montreal International School of Skating raised some questions.

“We’re always going to be a part of the Ilderton Skating Club and we’re honorary members of that,” said Moir. “But at the same time, we’re proud of what our friends and now coaches Marie-France and Patrice and Romain [Haguenauer] have created here in Montreal and to us, it was important for us to represent that and represent their school and represent the environment that they’ve created, because we’ve been just extremely impressed with that.”

So while a longtime sectional denotation of Western Ontario shifts eastward, their true base remains unchanged.

“This year you will see ‘Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, representing Montreal School of Skating and representing the province of Quebec,’ and we’re proud to do that, but that happens once a year,” he said. “We’ll always have Ilderton and we’ll definitely be representing Canada.”

**

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, two-time victors at Skate Canada International, will be entering this year’s competition ready to shake off Finlandia Trophy — an event marked by rougher than anticipated performances and, according to Radford, an uncharacteristic touch of jet lag and a more typical adjustment to new skates.

The pair, though, agree that it’s the difficult events that forge a path for the great ones.

“After the experience in Finland where we didn’t skate as well as we did two weeks prior in Quebec City [at Souvenir Georges-Éthier], that’s where the most valuable lessons are learned, where we can come back home and really work on a lot of things,” said Duhamel. “And we wouldn’t have learned that if we hadn’t had the experience that we had in Finland.”

“And I think a big realization,” noted Radford, “is that being a world champion doesn’t necessarily make it any easier.”

One more practical lesson was confirmation that certain aspects of their new throw triple axel — included in their short program to Seal’s “Killer” — would need a second look.

“Going into Finland, we had a feeling that it wasn’t going to stay the way it was — the throw axel was just uncomfortable, coming in the program after the lift,” said Duhamel. “We would go twist, jump, lift, then throw. And we also ended up with such a long, labored preparation for the throw. So now we changed the order to go twist, jump, directly into the throw, but we’ve cut out our preparation time by about three seconds on the throw takeoff, and it changes the whole energy of the program.”

The pair and their support team are enthusiastic to debut the revisions.

“We’ve added a new exit to our lift and everything is just more musical, it’s sharper, it’s stronger,” she continued. “The day we changed it, one of our coaches said, ‘There! Now the program looks like a real program!’ So I guess it’s going to be really entertaining.”