Virtue no longer hitting the Wall

Canadian ice dancer Tessa Virtue is happy to be back training on the ice after missing the Grand Prix season because of an unusual injury that required surgery on both legs.

The 19-year-old skater from London, Ont., missed the Grand Prix Final in Goyang City, South Korea, last month. She and her partner Scott Moir of Ilderton, Ont., could very well have won it. As world silver medalists, their routines may be the most riveting of any dance team in the world right now. It's just that nobody has seen them yet.

She's been back on the ice for only about five or six weeks, and with the Canadian figure-skating championships next week, Virtue realizes she has a lot of work to do. Will they be ready?

After some difficulty in diagnosing the problem, doctors finally said she had chronic external compartment syndrome, an overuse injury that is most commonly found in young athletes who are involved in endurance sports.

She had surgery on both of her legs in September to relieve growing pressure in her tissues and underwent physiotherapy, too.

Virtue felt pain in her shins last year that used to bother her only when she did compulsory dances. The pain never affected her performance. She had a break after the world championships, but when their training intensified, so did the pain and it took on a completely different form from what she had felt before: an aching, tight feeling. The pain began to hold her back from training. And they had been training intensely, she said.

“It's more common than I thought it was,'' Virtue said of chronic external compartment syndrome. “So many factors go into it.''

Now Virtue has a plan for her comeback. “I have to be patient,'' she said. It's easy for skaters to get carried away when they train. “When I'm on the ice, I feel great,'' she said. Adrenaline takes over. She wants to go for it. Now she can't always.

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Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir FD 2008/2009

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Delobel, Schoenfelder to miss '09 Europeans

The French Federation has announced that Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder, the reigning world champions in ice dancing, will not compete in the 2009 European championships.

Delobel injured her right shoulder during the exhibition at the ISU Grand Prix Final in Goyang City, Korea, in early December. The six-time national champions have not been able to skate competitively since and missed the chance to defend their title at the French championships.

Delobel was scheduled to undergo arthroscopic surgery in Annecy, a town in the French Alps, early this month. Only two weeks are left before the European championships, to be held in Helsinki, Finland, from Jan. 19-25, and Delobel will not be healthy enough by then.

Delobel and Schoenfelder were eager to compete at Europeans, because it was one of the few titles they did not win last season.

"We really wish to regain the European title we had won in 2007," Delobel had said earlier. Last year, the duo had to settle for the silver medal behind Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin.

The current season had started strong for veteran team. They won every competition they entered -- Skate America, the Trophée Eric Bompard and the GP Final. They even seemed to be on the rise in Goyang City, where they won each segment at a competition for the first time in 2008-09.

Delobel and Schoenfelder should resume training in February, after roughly a month of rehab for Delobel's shoulder. This should still leave the duo ample time to get ready for the 2009 World Championships in Los Angeles in late March.

Their withdrawal from Euros leaves the door wide open for their successors as French national champions, Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat, to make the podium in Finland. Pechalat and Bourzat have proved in the past that they could be strong contenders if they do not twist their steps or fall. Pernelle Carron and Mathieu Jost, ranked second in France, will be trying to improve on their ninth-place finishes from the past two years.

icenetwork.com

World champion skater jailed for drunk driving

BURGAS, Bulgaria - A Bulgarian court sentenced world ice dancing champion Maxim Staviski to 2 1/2 years in prison Monday for a fatal drunk driving accident.

The court overturned an earlier suspended sentence for the same term. Staviski, 31, was found guilty of crashing his car into an oncoming vehicle in August 2007. A 23-year-old man died and an 18-year-old woman was severely injured in the accident.

Police records showed Staviski's blood-alcohol level was more than double the legal limit.

Staviski was released pending his appeal. He was also ordered to pay 270,000 leva (C$228,480) in compensation.

Staviski and Albena Denkova captured their second consecutive ice dancing title at the World Figure Skating Championships in March 2007.

The Bulgarians finished just ahead of Canadians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon at the Tokyo competition.

tsn.ca

For Scott Hamilton, a well-lived life is compulsory

"I am a short, bald, chemo'd, brain-radiated, surgically repaired, male figure skater of unknown ethnic origin. What choice do I have but to be optimistic?"

Anyone fortunate enough to know Scott Hamilton will recognize his blunt humor in that passage from his soon-to-be-released book, "The Great Eight: How to Be Happy (Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable)."

If you don't know Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic figure skating gold medalist, survivor of testicular cancer and a brain tumor, you will think of him as a friend after reading this book.

Due Jan. 6, it's part self-help guide and part life manual with fatherly advice and reminders to seek joy amid everyday annoyances. It's not a rehash of his autobiography, published in 2000.

"To do another book was not really in my plans," he said.

Nor did he plan to get testicular cancer in 1997 or a pituitary brain tumor in 2004.

After that last medical ordeal -- his third, starting with the childhood digestive disorder that stunted his growth -- Hamilton began speaking to fellow brain tumor patients about the faith and philosophy that sustained him. From that came the book he felt compelled to write.

"You always joke about the old cliché, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger -- or leaves you disfigured for the rest of your life," Hamilton said. "I look at the scars I've accumulated, and that skin is tougher than what was there before.

"I've got a familiar face. There's more of it now than ever before. I felt I've experienced things for a reason and I've been able to help people going through cancer just by talking them through it. I've been through enough that it's brought me to a place that a decision here, a decision there, perspective, and kind of a shift in my mentality, wow, what a difference. And I just thought if I can share that with people it might inspire them to do the same."

He structured the book in eight chapters to celebrate his affinity for the number eight.

Born on 8/8/58 (and adopted six weeks later), he spent thousands of hours tracing variations of the basic figure eight while practicing compulsory figures. They demanded precision and patience but promoted edge control and body awareness, nuances lost on kids who wanted to jump and spin.

Compulsories weren't TV-friendly and were eliminated by skating officials. Hamilton lamented the decision.

"I knew what they gave to me. Ultimately they gave me better control over what I was doing on the ice, and I wouldn't have won the

Olympics without them," he said.

"Something that I resisted, something that I didn't fully appreciate the importance of, became the foundation of everything I was able to do afterwards."


Full article.

Cappellini and Lanotte: "Ice Dancing would not be a sport without the Compulsories"

Over the last three years Anna Cappellini (21) and Luca Lanotte (23) from Italy have proved to be one of the most promising young ice dancing teams. Their results speak for themselves – the couple finished 8th at their first senior European championships in 2007, won silver at Skate Canada several months later and made the top ten at the last Worlds in Gothenburg, Sweden. Cappellini/Lanotte managed to capture the hearts of numerous fans across the world with their incredible musicality, passion and expressiveness of their skating. AS had a chance to catch up with Anna and Luca after their 4th place finish at Cup of Russia which took place in Moscow in the end of November.

Could you please sum up your Cup of Russia experience this year?

Anna: We definitely could have made a better competition. We didn't skate badly. Surely we lost a couple of points here and there and that overall cost us the place because we finished only 1,5 points behind Meryl Davis and Charlie White who were clearly behind us in the Original Dance because they had such a bad performance, but we could have used it if we hadn't had so many mistakes. Obviously it's a bit of a disappointment, but overall we skated like in China where we had such a good time. If you look at it compared to the other teams, it was definitely worst here, but if you consider what we did it's pretty much the same.

Luca: We could have done better in the Free. We were a little bit nervous when we took the ice. The result seems correct to me.

Coming into the FD, did you feel any pressure? With almost 7 point margin you had a very good chance to medal here.

Anna: We didn't feel that much of the pressure because we thought if we had skated a clean Free, we would have probably kept the place. We just wanted to go and perform well like we had already done in China. The difference was that this time we could not afford mistakes. In China, if we had done one or two mistakes we wouldn't have lost the place, here it happened. We didn't expect Meryl and Charlie to pull up like that. They are really great, obviously better than us at the moment; we just didn't expect they could get so many points. True is that there is a lot to work on. Maybe this is a good result. It's going to make us think a lot. Probably if we had kept the third place we would have thought too much of ourselves and we wouldn't work like we definitely are going now. We were so close to the medal and it really hurts to lose it just because of a couple of mistakes. We think we need to feel stronger on the ice and put up a bigger fight. It feels like whenever we take the ice we want to do our job and get out of there. That will come with the experience, but we need to work on that.

Full interview.

Adam Rippon: A Happy New Year Dawns

America’s Adam Rippon is confident 2009 is going to be a great year.

New Year’s Day found the rising star on the ice at his new training venue, the Toronto Cricket, Skating & Curling Club, with his new coach, Brian Orser.

Rippon said he could not be happier. He is also excited that David Wilson will be his new choreographer.

The reigning World Junior Champion kicked off 2009 with a performance of his short program for club patrons. Judging by the applause and the screams from the young girls in attendance, Rippon, who moved to Toronto full-time on Dec. 28, already has a fan club at his new training home.

Rippon said he made the decision to leave his former coach Nikolai Morozov in November and that the Orser team was highly recommended to he and his family as the best option.

“I knew before Cup of Russia that I would have to find another situation,” Rippon said. “I went to Russia with Nikolai and when I came home I called him and told him that I needed to work with a coach who can really dedicate more time to me.

“Nikolai has so much going on and he just did not really have enough time for me. I completely understand that because he has so many other high level skaters but I spent a lot of time in Hackensack just skating by myself.”

Rippon said working with Morozov was a learning experience. "I got to skate with Daisuke Takahashi and Miki Ando. It was a big year for Nikolai and it was a big year for me to start skating with him and I definitely learned so much.

"But this summer Daisuke left and Nobunari Oda and Fumie Suguri came and Nikolai had gained a lot of other students, so the time we had together was very limited and it really was not the same working environment any more."


Full article.