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Don't expect superstars to try quads on MTS ice
| Source: |
Winnipeg Free Press |
| Date: |
April 25, 2008 |
| Author: |
Laurie Nealin |
Jeff Buttle. Reigning world champion. Newly minted figure skating
star.
Kurt Browning. Quadruple world champion. Skating legend.
The latter knows well what it's like to head into an Olympic Games as
a gold medal hope for Canada. The former is about to find out.
Twenty years ago, Browning made figure skating history by landing the
first quadruple jump at the post-Olympics Worlds in Budapest. Four
world titles (1989, 1990, '91, '93) followed but his Olympics
campaigns in 1992 and '94 were heartbreakers, ending without a medal
of any colour.
Two decades later, the quad is again a hot topic of
conversation. Buttle won the world title last month without one but
practically everyone, including him, believes he'll need that jump to
win Olympic gold in Vancouver in 2010.
On Wednesday, when Browning and Buttle take to the ice at MTS Centre
with the Stars on Ice troupe, there will be no four-revolution
jumps. Browning, at 42, knows better than to try to relive his youth
at this stage of the game, while Buttle will save tackling the
daunting quad for summer training.
In the meantime, Buttle is savouring his world champion status and the
nightly standing ovations that come with it on the cross-Canada tour,
but once training begins anew in June, he will check his recent
success at the door.
"It's really important to go into it with a clean slate and train as
though you're not a champion, push even harder. But going to compete,
you know that you are the champion and that will give you great
confidence all around," he said.
Despite heading to the 2006 Olympics as world silver medallist, Buttle
concedes he was not considered a favourite as those Games
approached. "It was expected that I would take the bronze medal," he
said. A different scenario is shaping up for home ice in
Vancouver.
Canada last hosted the Olympics in 1988 in Calgary where figure
skaters accounted for three of the five medals won by the entire
Canadian team. Brian Orser and Elizabeth Manley took silver in the
singles events, while Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall earned bronze in ice
dance. (Skier Karen Percy won the other two medals.)
Buttle was then five years old and has no memory of those Games, while
Browning was just cutting his own competitive teeth at the sport's
highest level. The Alberta-born athlete had more fun than anything in
Calgary, yet skated to a commendable eighth-place finish.
Orser and Wilson have been Buttle's sources when it comes to
understanding the pressure of a home-country Games. "They've warned us
of the increased pressures. I think we're really lucky to have those
skaters to talk to, especially Brian in my event dealing with the
incredible pressure of the Battle of the Brians (against eventual gold
medalist Boitano)," said Buttle, 25, who trains in Barrie, Ont., and
Lake Arrowhead, Calif.
When Buttle won gold last month, Browning was in the CBC broadcast
booth. "I think Jeffrey Buttle's world is about to change," he said
then.
In an interview with the Free Press, Browning explained he was
referring not to what would happen around Buttle, but how he would now
feel inside. "I doubt that he will question anything, ever, about his
skating just because he already won that thing once.
"Now he can relax and just skate his ass off. He doesn't have to worry
if it's going to happen this time because it's happened before,"
Browning added.
At the 2008 Worlds, Buttle led a team that proved to be Canada's most
successful in 19 years -- winning men's gold, ice dance silver and
bronze in pairs.
Given the ambitious Own The Podium goal of scooping up the most medals
of any country competing in Vancouver in 2010, OTP folks will need its
fancy skaters to convert potential into podium finishes again in two
years.
"We're really on track and more than focusing on the medals
themselves, we need to make sure we're training properly and I think
the rest will fall into place," Buttle said.
Browning, whose own 2010 Olympic season goal is to perform for the
20th-straight year with Stars on Ice, said replicating the success of
the 1988 Olympic figure skating team will "require a lot of things to
go right... Jeffrey knows he will probably need that quad. The square
pegs have to fall into square holes and then we can talk medals."
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