Ravings from the Rink: Skate Canada 2019

I’m writing this blog post (well, at least starting it…) the day after getting home from Kelowna (after a whole day of travel) and to say that it’s been hard adjusting to normal life after one of the most wild weekends of skating I’ve ever experienced in my life is... a severe understatement to say the least. It’s been an incredible 6 days of adventures and the best kind of happy exhaustion, the kind that you’re so excited to recount, revisit, and share with everyone.

Kelowna - an understated but beautiful lake retreat (with a friendly lake monster)

I was at Skate Canada 2018 in Laval, Quebec (which is basically Montreal), a location that is a drivable distance for me since I live in New York. When I heard that Skate Canada 2019 was going to be held in Kelowna and finding out from Google Maps that it was basically a remote, mountain-lake resort town in the middle of nowhere, BC (sorry BC people) let’s say... there were heavy doubts about our prospects of traveling all the way out there for Skate Canada next year. Considering most of us were on the East Coast and would have to take at least 2 to 3 flights, ha, no chance, the line up would have to be killer if we were gonna travel all the way out there. 🤡

Well here I am eating my words! And with good reason, as I discovered that Kelowna is an absolutely beautiful place to spend your time in the latter half of October. It’s a gorgeous town right along the enormous Okanagan Lake in Okanagan Valley, which means it’s also lined with stunning mountain views - AKA MY FAVORITE. There’s truly nothing I love more than the view of water and mountains, which is what BC is known for. Because we had been at Skate America the week prior, Becs and I flew in together directly from Las Vegas which was a much more cost and time-efficient travel route than flying back to our respective homes in the Midwest and East Coast (even if it meant dealing with baggage woes and camping out in McCarran Airport overnight *cries*). And because we arrived around noon, we were greeted with a stunning, cloudless view of the entire Okanagan valley while landing.

Bad iphone photo of Lake Okanagan, home of the Ogopogo!

Since this trip was basically an extension of our trip to Skate America, it was important for us to budget well. Now because Kelowna is a resort town, let’s just say that housing prices weren’t the friendliest, and especially for smaller groups of people. So we did what we had to do and stayed at a hostel, which was only around $25 per night. If you don’t know what a hostel is, it’s essentially a low budget dormitory that’s good for travelers on a budget. You’ll often see a lot of backpackers, people who just need a shower and a roof over their heads for the night while or a place to stop for rest. The rooms are usually bunk bed dormitories with a set number of beds that you reserve beforehand. Most hostels have a kitchen, a shared lounge/living space, and communal bathrooms just like you’d find in any college dormitory. The kitchen part makes eating on a budget real handy because you can buy groceries and cook your own meals instead of eating out. Becs and I decided to make some chicken soup out of a rotisserie chicken and veggies, and it lasted us two delicious meals. Worth it!!!!! And our bank accounts thank us.

By far the healthiest and cheapest thing we ate this entire week…

All around town, you’ll see references to the Ogopogo, which is Kelowna’s mascot. It’s supposedly a sea monster that lives in Okanagan Lake, but all the ones I’ve seen of it around town have been quite adorable so I’m not sure how much of a monster it could be. Look, we even made friends with it during our walk along the lake!

My favorite two week travel buddy and sometimes reluctant model

If you’ve got some time to explore the area, take advantage of how walkable the city is, and enjoy a brisk walk in Kelowna’s lush natural landscapes. The city is very reminiscent of college towns — minimal traffic on grid streets lined with an amalgamation of shops, restaurants, cafes, and drugstores. There’s plenty of different little boutiques and novelty shops to explore if you’re interested in shopping. However, if you’re an adventurous person who enjoys the outdoors like our group was, Knox Mountain just north of the city has hiking trails on it that are open until 9pm. Even if you’re not an avid hiker, there are still some easier ones for those who just want a chill, casual stroll along the mountain side for some gorgeous views of Kelowna and Lake Okanagan from above. We decided to take a pre-dinner, golden hour stroll up to the end of Apex Trail—and believe me, it’s worth it.

Reunited with Gabb, sporting a whole new hair color a mere 48 hours after leaving us in Vegas! The new look matches the backdrop though, no?

Kelowna also boasts a stunning Japanese garden known as the Kasugai Garden Park, open from March until the end of October—which means we made it just in time! Kasugai is Kelowna’s sister city in Japan, and the garden was created in 1987 as a symbol of the friendship between the two. As with traditional Japanese gardens, when you make your way through Kasugai you will be greeted by lush plant life as the sight of koi and the soothing sound of waterfalls clear your mind of all the stress and worries of your sad existence.

And talk about perfect timing to be in British Columbia, the weather wasn’t painfully cold yet, and all the trees were boasting their beautiful fall foliage (that made for a gorgeous backdrop for impromptu photo shoots). While it was definitely a change from the dry heat of Las Vegas, it was the perfect kind of weather to take a stroll with just a light jacket—if you weren’t going to the rink that day—and boots.

Venue: Prospera Place

Prospera Place is located at the north end of Kelowna, and is definitely fairly intimate as far as rinks go, especially for a major international skating competition. It holds around 6000 people, which is about ⅔ the capacity of the arena last year, Place Bell in Laval, which held 10,000 people. It had only one main entrance through which spectators could enter. Security wasn’t super strict with bag checking, but as you might expect of most major events, they didn’t allow any outside food into the arena. But I think that was really appalling was that there were no water fountains to refill water bottles anywhere in the rink. Ice rinks are famously dry and at previous competitions, I had learned my lesson about not staying well hydrated, as basically every competition I came back with a hoarse and sore throat and a bit under the weather. So to see that Prospera was ready to thwart me again had me a bit ticked off. Rink food wasn’t exorbitantly expensive, believe me I’d seen worse (looking at you, Honda Center in Anaheim with your $18.00 USD tacos and $7.00 USD bottle of water…) but not gonna lie: to sustain yourself on a diet of just rink chicken tenders and fries for 4 days straight is a pretty sad life. I would know—I’ve been there 💀.

Thankfully though, there are plenty of coffee shops and restaurants that are within walking distance of the rink, so if you’re smart and decide not to be a rink rat who sits through every practice from 6am to 7pm (...don’t judge me) there are other places to spend your time that are A) warmer and B) offer much cheaper and better quality food. And C)...electric outlets! Which means you can charge your dying batteries that are likely suffering more than usual due to the cold, and it makes a great place to do some computer work because, again, electronic batteries drain like crazy in the rink and sometimes you just need somewhere to plug in your laptop as you desperately transfer 2000 raw photos from practice so you can format your card before competition. What else can you do?

Sprout Cafe - a frequent favorite by attendees and coaches alike!

Competition, practice, and how to avoid skating burn out

Thursday practices at Skate Canada’s practices started at 8AM and ran until 7:05PM. Now, 8AM actually isn’t a terrible start time for practices, but practices on competition days began at the bright and early time of 6:00AM - over an hour and a half before sunrise! When you pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket to a major skating competition, the thought of “I need to get my money’s worth of skating,” can creep in, which leads to the guilt of skipping out on practices. It’s often a good reminder that you ultimately spend money to have a good time. Doing two back to back competitions one week after the other can lead to serious skating burn out, and the end goal of attending competitions should be to get excited and pumped about seeing your favorite skaters skate (well) live. It’s so easy to get burned out when you convince yourself that you absolutely NEED to attend every morning practice and every single practice session.

As I mentioned before, Thursday practice ran from 8:00AM all the way to 7:05PM with essentially no breaks, just a 15 minute resurfacing between each of the 8 sessions. That is 11 solid hours sitting in, what is essentially, a freezer. To attend every single session requires a lot of commitment, I would be lying if I said I didn’t start dozing off during one (or more) of these practice sessions. So it’s okay to skip out on some sessions you’re not fully invested in. Unless you have a purpose for being there—for example you really want to see a particular program, a particular skater, find the perfect angles for photography that you may not be able to get during the actual competition—IT’S OKAY TO SKIP PRACTICE. Especially if it means you’ll be more awake later. Remember that you will have a chance to see these programs again during the competition, and ideally, you’d want to be awake during it!

We attended Thursday practice with the intention of making it for the second group of ice dance practice at 8:20AM. Thankfully, we stayed at a hostel about a 20 minute walk away from the rink, which made for a fairly easy and cheap commute. Because Thursday practice was not the most packed, we were able to hop around from our seats into the media section on the judges side and sat in the front row for most of practice. Because the men were practicing right after ice dance, there were plenty of people who were reserving seats to have a good view of a certain men’s skater, whom I’ll talk about later.

Because scheduling is so tight between practice sessions with only about a 10-15 minute resurfacing between sessions, even finding time to eat was a hassle. But thankfully because of the restaurants close by the rink that we could run to during the pairs’ first practice session (sorry pairs!) since we really wanted to watch the ladies practice. And thankfully security was pretty chill about our sushi since we just ended up sneaking it into the arena no problem. But after about another 3 hours or so of practice, which was the afternoon session of Ice Dance and Men’s practice, we decided it was time to call it quits for the day. None of us were super invested in Pairs, and it was just not worth it sitting through an hour of practice just for the ladies again. So we called it an early night because the next day, practice began at 6:00AM and if were going to make one of the rhythm dance practice groups, it was best not to fully exhaust ourselves on day 1. Remember that competition attendance is a marathon, not a sprint. Sorry ladies, but dinner was calling.

Competition Recap/Highlights:

As far as early Grand Prix events go, I’d say that this event went about as well as I could’ve dreamt of for all four disciplines, since I’m used to the first few Grand Prix events being a bit messier in terms of performance and especially if there were skaters doing back-to-back Grands Prix. I was already so excited because there were so many skaters that I hadn’t seen before that I’d been wanting to see that were on the entry list.

Ice Dance:
I’ve always loved watching Ice Dance live, because speed is one of those qualities that is so much easier to judge live than on a screen, and good Ice Dancers are some of the fastest skaters you’ll ever see. (It can also be nerve-wracking watching practices and warm-ups...the potential for collisions in ice dance makes them really scary.) This was a really exciting Ice Dance event for me personally, and for more reasons than just the end result. This was my first time seeing Sara Hurtado/Kirill Khaliavin and Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson, aka the “Disco Brits”, live. Sara and Kirill have some of the most unique choreography, and I absolutely love watching Sara in particular and her intensity of expression on the ice. She skates with so much fire, and it’s been such a joy watching them be one of the teams leading the charge of Spanish Ice Dance and ascending the ranks in the past few seasons. I love absolutely love their Flamenco free dance their season, which obviously suits them so well. The cut of her dress is really unique and beautiful on her — although I do wish it was a bit more dynamic since they look better in photos.

Hurtado/Khaliavin’s Free Dance - “Orobroy, Puerta del Sol”

Lilah and Lewis have a fantastic, fun energy about them, and have charmed so many people to their side with their iconic Disco free dance from last season. Their new Vogue free dance captures a similar type of vibe, but it’s pretty hard to compete with a free dance like last season’s which basically put them on the radar. But it was thrilling to see them win their first ever Grand Prix medal here. And they blessed us with an abbreviated version of their Disco program during the Gala as a bonus!

And of course the highlight of the event was definitely seeing Piper and Paul coming from behind to win their first ever Grand Prix gold! And on home ice! If you haven’t seen their (well, mostly Piper’s) precious reactions in the kiss and cry when they saw their scores come up, PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW.

Shout-out to Betina Popova and Sergey Mozgov who were so endlessly charming, especially with their entertaining Cabaret RD! Gabb held up a banner for them, and Betina kindly came over for a visit to take a photo with us and the banner once the event was over!

Sorry for the very poorly exposed selfie, but still cute

Ladies:
Probably one of my most highly anticipated events, given that two of the girls here were on my bucket-list to watch live. One of them was Marin Honda, who was an absolute dream to watch for her pure skating skills. She and Yuna Shiraiwa were my last must-see Japanese ladies (now just Yuna left!), and she was an absolute treat. As devastated as I was that Mai [Mihara] had to withdraw, I could not be more thrilled for Marin to get a second GP assignment here because I knew that I wouldn’t have many opportunities to watch her skate live, given the depth of the Japanese ladies field at the moment. I was pretty worried about her considering she had been in a car accident and sustained some injuries of dubious severity on her leg and neck. While I have personal reservations about whether she really should have been competing here given her condition and while she wasn’t foot perfect in either program, I was relieved that she got off the ice with a smile at the end of her free skate, and looked pleased with herself—which is all I could’ve hoped for. Marin is such an enchanting skater; she floats across the ice with such ease and speed, and her programs are absolutely fantastic at showcasing her naturally expressive face, which lights up the arena. And while I tend not to be a huge fan of La La Land programs, her effervescent personality suits the music so well and I was enamored.

I would certainly be remiss to not mention the showdown between Russian quadster Sasha Trusova, who was also making her senior GP debut, and Rika Kihira, who I adore. I was so proud that Rika was able to nail her 3A in the short program despite fighting a leg injury, considering it had been a weakness for her across many of her short programs last season. It gave her a huge advantage, considering quads (currently) aren’t allowed in the short program, and Sasha doesn’t have a 3A. I have always loved the way that Rika moves with her full body, and while I was not sure about her SP when I first saw it, it definitely grew on me a lot by the time I saw it here, and the music works INFINITELY better live than it does over video. Rika always shows up to competition looking so well-prepared and well-practiced, and her choreography is much more complex in this program than her SP last season, so I am definitely looking forward to seeing it grow.

My favorite part of Rika’s “Breakfast in Baghdad” - her Besti squat into Ina Bauer

But it was always going to be an uphill battle against Sasha’s four quads, of which she landed three -- only falling on the first 4S. When her score came up on the screen I couldn’t even believe what I was looking at... it was definitely a moment to remember. But despite how intimidating Sasha can seem when she’s on the ice (have you seen her abs?!?!?) she reminds you of her youth when she giddily skates towards you while you wave a flower crown at her.

Alexandra Trusova - SP - precostume change

Shout-out also to Evgenia Medvedeva, who unfortunately like last year, skated a rough short program despite looking so prepared during the practice sessions, but came back strong in the free skate where she came in 3rd in the segment and 5th overall. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to overcome the deficit to get her on the podium unlike last year, where she was able to skate her way up to 3rd overall. Nonetheless, I find her grit and focus inspirational, and it’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to pull yourself out of a mental rut knowing that you took yourself out of contention in the short program. Kudos to her!

Pairs:
If you’d asked me before the event who I pegged to win, I probably would’ve said Tarasova and Morozov. But sometimes when one team falters, it’s an opportunity for another team to capitalize on, and capitalize on it is exactly what Boikova/Kozlovskii did. I was so excited to see Boikova and Kozlovskii here after the last time I saw them live, about a year ago at their senior GP debut at Skate Canada 2019. The first time I saw them I remember thinking, “Oh, these young ones are really talented, I just feel like their FS (to The Nutcracker) was too Russian”. But this year’s James Bond FS is shaping up to be one of my favorites—it is modern but allows for them to still show off their classic Russian skating and lines. Sasha’s free leg extension in all their throws are incredible, and they are some of the most consistent jumpers of the entire Pairs field. In Pairs, teams that land jumps consistently are few and far between, so when you find a team that can execute well on both the pair elements and jumps, they’re definitely going to be mighty contenders.

Tarasova/Morozov on the other hand were... to put it kindly, not in the best shape. They looked really rough at their one prior competition this season at US Classic, but let’s be real, US Classic Pairs is always a hot mess considering none of the non-American pairs are prepared to compete at altitude at the beginning of the season. But even here they looked in rough shape, including at practice. I even commented to people that Vladimir in particular looked completely winded and out of it at practice, and wondered if he was sick or injured. And so when they had to abort a lift I was stunned but not wholly surprised either because they had struggled all weekend. But seeing that lift put them down in third under the Canadians, Kirsten Moore-Towers/Michael Marinaro - that certainly was a shock to the system.

I was also interested in seeing Lubov Ilyushechkina and Charlie Bilodeau, since it’d been a hot second since I’d seen either of them compete, and I was really impressed by how incredible Lubov still looks in lifts and in pair elements. They could both use some work jumps wise though. Jumps were never her strong suit, but then like I said, it’s rarely anyone’s strength Pairs.

Shout out to Feiyao Tang/Yongchao Yang, making their senior international debut here at Skate Canada. As a long time fan of Chinese pairs, I am always excited in anticipation of more Chinese pairs rising the ranks. We’ve been direly missing them since so many have been out due to injury (tragically remembers last Grand Prix when there was a grand total of ONE (1) Chinese pair - thank you Peng/Jin for making it to Grand Prix Final at the very least). They had a pretty rough outing here, but for them it really is just about getting more international experience and exposure.

Men:
Now the men — the event everyone was arguably most excited for. And there was really so much to be excited for! See, I usually stress out about the men’s event the most because it always has the highest potential to be a complete disaster of messy quads and throw away performances, especially towards the beginning of the season. But on the contrary, it also has the potential to be spectacular, and I’m so, so grateful that the event leaned towards the latter. We had a young American skater making his senior GP debut and finishing second after the segment and fourth overall - which was incredible for him if you know his history of completely falling apart in the free (and he didn’t here! Or at least as much as he could’ve!).

We had a veteran skater who made a strong case for himself to be at the Grand Prix Final and finishing third, his second podium ever on the Grand Prix.

Listen, Sherlock Holmes may have been a bit on-the-nose, but I still love it.

We had a National Champion performing insanely well on home ice and delivering an incredible performance under intense pressure, skating last and after the reigning Olympic champion’s absolutely killer performance.

And of course, the man himself...

Yuzuru Hanyu, and what it’s like to watch a master hone his craft (aka a sentimental feels-dump to the figure skater that changed my life)

Despite it being my sixth live skating event and second time attending Skate Canada, this was a particularly special and unique competition experience, because it was my first time attending a major competition with Yuzuru Hanyu in attendance. I saw him live for the first time last year at Autumn Classic International in Oakville, which is a comparatively smaller and lower stakes competition in a smaller venue. As soon as he arrived, the city of Kelowna itself even felt more lively and vibrant with the anticipation—Becs and I arrived on the Tuesday before Skate Canada, when a lot of the streets were pretty quiet and not as many fans had arrived yet, but on Wednesday a lot more of the streets were packed with people, restaurants were full, etc. Lots of attendees mentioned that upon going through Canadian customs, many of the customs and border security officials already knew that everyone was coming for “that Japanese skater.” But there truly is something special about him that inspires people to travel over thousands of miles to see him.

There’s a feeling of restless of anticipation as you’re waiting for the moment you see Yuzuru step out on the ice. When he enters the rink, bends down in his traditional greeting to the ice, there’s almost this feeling that he’s gathering all of the energy in the arena as he immediately bolts down the rink beginning the warm up. Yuzuru is such a fascinating skater to observe in practice, and in fact while watching him compete here was one of the obvious highlights of my Skate Canada experience, simply watching him stroke and practice in his natural element were my favorite memories from the competition. For 85% of practice, he has his usual competition “game-face,” which conveys that he’s not messing around— but not in an intentionally menacing or intimidating way, although I understand what skaters who share practice ice with him mean when they say that he has an incredibly commanding presence that can feel intimidating. The other 15% of the time, he reverts to his endearing and personable self, frequently skating back to his coaches Brian and Ghislain and joking around with them, sometimes affectionately petting the ears of his familiar companion, Pooh, other times observing the other competitors in practice. It’s incredibly entertaining to watch the variety of facial expressions he can make during practice.

He practices with the same passion that you see him bring to the actual competition, which is why sometimes his practice run-throughs are even better than his actual competition performances—when he did his Otonal step sequence down the rink during that Thursday morning practice, I basically killed my poor camera shutter trying to grab as many photos as I could on burst. (And of course with my luck, there are like, 5 acceptable ones.)

For those who aren’t too familiar with me, I’ve been watching Yuzuru skate for nearly 6 years now, and I often describe the moment he won his second Olympic Gold Medal in Pyeongchang as one of the happiest moments of my life. The feeling of catharsis after four years of stressing about him winning there, knowing just how badly he wanted it. After Pyeongchang, I mellowed out significantly in terms of how nervous I felt about needing him to win, and let’s be honest, despite Yuzu’s so-called “Skate Canada Curse,” many things would’ve needed to go horribly wrong for him here to have prevented him from winning. But even while knowing all of this, I felt the same nerves and stress of the past 4 years returning, heart racing, hands so sweaty and shaky I could barely hold my camera steady enough to take photos. All the way up to the moment he landed his final jumping pass of his programs, I was jittery and nervous, and I don’t even know why!

In the end, you all probably know the results. He skated absolutely lights out and created two unforgettable, historical performances, which is just two of many in his illustrious career, for his first ever career win at Skate Canada—during his TENTH year on the Senior international circuit. There’s something extremely special about witnessing a stunning performance live, not knowing what the results will be. The sheer excitement as the skater nails element after element, and allows that momentum to propel the performance forward. Moments that make you realize how blessed you are to see that moment of triumph with your own eyes, even as you’re accidentally pelted in the head (HARD) by the rain of Poohs that have become trademark after any Yuzuru performance. And the roar of the crowd when his scores came up…60 points, dude. What a way to win your first Skate Canada, Yuzuru. 😂

What inspires me so much about Yuzuru is that despite all of his achievements, all of the incredible fame and recognition he’s acquired through the years, he still continues to compete at this high a level and refuses to become complacent. In 2018, he could’ve easily walked away from the sport, prevented his body from further deteriorating and risking further injury to his already ailing feet and ankles, while still knowing that his name lies safely among (and to be frank, above) the other figure skating legends. But instead he chooses to benevolently grace us with his radiant presence, and all I can do is be grateful for that.

So, to the flower crowns saga! Make no mistake, we were absolutely setting our expectations low for the men. Historically, the men have been much more... hesitant to wear them in general, and there was no telling if that would be the case here at Skate Canada as well, given that we’re well aware of Yuzu’s strict policy regarding fan gifts and interactions. Becs and I knew it would ultimately depend on his mood and who his podium mates were. Thankfully, Yuzu was giddy as I’ve ever seen him after winning the event by 60 points. And, his teammate Keiji and old training mate Nam were on the podium with him! So we sprinted to the boards as quick as we could and figured we’d tried to ask either Nam or Keiji to receive the crowns since we didn’t want to force Yuzu into interacting with us. I’m sure you all know the rest of the story! Thanks Nam, for being such a great sport, and of course to Yuzu and Keiji as well for going along with our antics, even if it was for just a few seconds!

During the gala, I was wondering what Yuzu might perform as his exhibition performance. And to be honest, I was really, really hoping it’d be the same EX from last year, “Haru yo, Koi.” I’d been dying to see it last year and I felt snaked out of seeing it since he withdrew from Grand Prix Final and didn’t go to Four Continents (where I was in attendance), and there’s no gala at Autumn Classic. I heard rumors floating around about him doing Parisienne Walkways which had me like EH? And I had no idea where the speculation originated so I had no idea what to believe. But as soon as I saw him across the rink in that shiny blue button up (a bit tighter fitting than I’m used to?), I couldn’t believe it. And there he was, with his 2x OGM, rock-star energy skating to the program that originally introduced me to his skating back during the Team Event in Sochi 2014 - a truly full circle moment. It is a fascinating experience to watch a 6 year-old program brought back and skated with a noticeable increase in charisma and quality. He even did his competition lay out from back then (well, except for the 2T combo), which had me absolutely dying since most skaters jump only once or twice during exhibitions...and here he is with a quad, triple Axel, and triple Lutz combo.

But at the end of it all, I felt so blessed to be able to see Yuzuru end this competition on a happy note and have a good start to the season. Skate Canada just nailed home that even if he does cause me a lot of stress health-wise, I really couldn’t care less about the results, as long as he stays happy and healthy and continues to do what he loves and love what he does. Thank you, Yuzuru, for giving me such a life-changing experience, and I am grateful for your continued presence in this sport. I will cherish whatever time we have left together.

All in all, for all the reservations I had about doing back-to-back Grand Prix, this one was definitely worth all the traveling, early mornings, and late nights. Figure skating is such an incredible sport because you get to experience some high highs and low lows but all the same feel so intimately connected in these skaters’ journeys, and especially when I come to live competitions I feel incredibly lucky to be able to witness in real time the culmination of many of these skaters’ hard work.

Quick shout out to everyone who came up to me or any of the other ITL members at the event to say hi, whether at the arena or at the hostel! We really appreciate the support, and it’s always lovely to meet friends at competition. Sorry if we all looked like zombies💀 — like I said, it was a long, but fulfilling and eventful weekend!