Sale, Pelletier begin tour

One of the feel-good ironies of the Stars On Ice figure skating tour that is getting set to cross Canada is that it has brought Jamie Sale and David Pelletier together with Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.

That the two pairs would become close friends was considered an unlikely scenario in the aftermath of the Olympic pairs judging fiasco last winter. The Russians had won and they were initially indignant about the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the Canadians a second set of gold medals.

All that has changed. Riding the Stars on Ice buses for four months on the U.S. tour gave them plenty of time to become acquainted. Now they'll fly across Canada skating in 11 cities beginning Wednesday night in Halifax.

"We didn't really know them personally before," says Sale. "We just knew them as competitors.

"Now that we've got to know them, we get along well. Elena and I have grown closer. She's very shy and quiet but she comes up with these one-liners that blow people away. They make us laugh a lot."

Pelletier and Sikharulidze share a common interest in hockey.

"We sit and talk - not about skating but about politics and stuff," says Pelletier. "He always has a very different point of view because of his background.

"He's very interesting. We talk a lot about hockey. He's friends with a lot of Russian hockey players."

They'll move on to Ottawa for a Saturday show, they'll perform in Quebec and Montreal next Tuesday and Wednesday, and they are in Toronto on Friday, April 25. Then it's on to Hamilton, London, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.

The Edmonton and Vancouver stops will be of special significance to Sale and Pelletier. Vancouver is where they won the world championship two years ago. Edmonton is where they qualified for the Olympics, and it is where they live when they are not on the road.

The Stars On Ice cast includes Kurt Browning, Alexei Yagudin, Jennifer Robinson, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Todd Eldredge, Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman and Steven Cousins.

"It's going fantastic," says Sale. "We do three throws a night and lots of lifts and twists and stuff and we've only missed six throws" in more than 60 shows.

"Fifty-seven times three throws. You do the math. And we've only missed six. We're skating good and we're having a lot of fun."

It's not always easy.

"It's hard to do that stuff night after night with 10-hour bus rides in between," says Sale.

"It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel sometimes but we're almost done," Pelletier says of the neverending tours.

They are firmly behind the new World Skating Federation, the formation of which was announced during the recent world championships in Washington. The WSF has no member federations yet but somebody has to take a run at the established International Skating Union, says Pelletier.

"It's a great idea," he says. "To say it's going to happen is naive because it would take a lot of work.

"But that doesn't mean we have to sit and watch what the ISU is doing and do nothing about it. The sport is not doing too well. We need a new leader. We have to make some changes."

They are not founding members of the WSF.

"We're just endorsing what they want to do," says Pelletier.

They've been eager to begin their first full-fledged tour of Canada since earning Olympic gold.

"We've heard that a lot of the cities are sold out or near sold out," says Sale. "We can't wait."

U.S. crowds were enthusiastic but small, averaging 6,000.

"In Canada, we're at least doubling that," she says.

After the tour ends in Vancouver, they'll use two airline tickets they were given for their Olympic breakthrough to go on a Caribbean vacation.