'I'm right at a crossroads': Robinson

Jennifer Robinson has always preferred to skate to classical music, but her current predicament is right out of rock 'n' roll's The Clash.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

"I'm right at a crossroads," concedes Robinson, who will be in Hamilton this Saturday as part of Stars On Ice's annual visit to Copps Coliseum.

As the star-studded tour passes through Toronto, Hamilton and London this weekend the six-time Canadian champion will sit down with her husband Shane Dennison and coaches Michelle and Doug Leigh to decide whether she'll remain in eligible skating for another season or pursue that university education she's been putting off for years.

Skate Canada has given Robinson a deadline of May 1 to make up her mind. The umbrella organization for 'amateur' skating in this country needs to declare its roster for next fall's international competitions, and Robinson's decision will impact who goes to what Grand Prix events.

"They said they'd support me fully in whatever I decide," Robinson says, "I'm half and half right now. I love the training and competing. I'm still willing to take those bumps and bruises. It's all great, but I'm 26 years old. And I want to explore some other avenues in my life.

"On the other hand, this is my first time in Stars on Ice and it's been a blast. I'm not sure I'm ready to turn my back on it all yet. I love to perform and it's the best day job. I want to make sure that I stay a bit too long, so I don't leave anything behind."

Robinson is coming off a good season in which she finished ninth for the second year in a row at the world championships, which included her best international moment to date: placing second in her qualifying group. This year for the first time, she landed a triple-triple in competition, when she became the first woman in the modern era to win six Canadian titles.

She's won the last five in a row, distancing herself from an emerging crop of young hopefuls who lack her poise and experience, and she could probably run her string to six straight if she comes back for another year. Especially if those triple-triple combinations become consistent. She's also been fooling around with a triple Axel. The toughest triple jump was absent from women's skating from 1992, when Midori Ito landed one at the Albertville Olympics, until this season when Japan's Yukari Nakano and Russia's Ludmila Nelidina both landed one at Skate America. A few months later, Japan's Mika Ando upped the technical bar even higher when she landed a quad, the first by a female, at the Junior Grand Prix Final. Two other skaters at Worlds also landed a pair of triple-triple combinations in their long programs.

So, at the international level the technical component of women's division, which had been in a holding pattern, is on the rise again.

"I think I need to have two triple-triples next year, if I want to improve," Robinson said. "There's a lot of training involved in that. I've been working on the triple Lutz-triple toe and I've been trying the triple Axel and falling reeeeeallly hard."

Robinson wants a career in broadcasting and would like to attend Ryerson, but that would likely be impossible to combine with a high level of training, especially with the technical ante being so radically upped.

If she does retire, she can do it with her head held high. She has all those championships and has conducted herself honorably and with a terrific sense of self-deprecating humour through some of the roughest times ever to befall the women's division in this country.

In her early years as Canadian medallist -- she won in 1996 then had a couple of terrible performances at Nationals until she began her current streak -- Robinson had to absorb the lion's share of the scorn levelled at the state of Canadian women's skating.

The criticism climaxed in 1998 when Canada did not qualify to send a women to the Olympics for the first time since 1920. That it was the failure of others, not Robinson, to do well enough in 1997 to earn an Olympic berth meant little. Robinson was the face of women's skating in this country and herself had two lacklustre performances at Worlds (21st in 1996, 18th in 1999), so she had to answer to the press not only for herself, but for her sport. She did it with wit and patience and without resorting to the snappiness that so many athletes exhibit under critical bombardment.

And it should always be remembered that while Robinson has had stretches in her career when mistakes -- being too deliberate, two-footing triple jumps, or skating too slowly --tended to repeat themselves in competition after competition, she has always worked diligently to eliminate those mental obstacles. Usually she's succeeded.

It is not her fault that Canada has slid drastically back to the middle of the world pack or below. At an age when most female skaters have turned pro or left the sport, Robinson herself has actually been improving. In the most competitive era in the history of skating, her back-to-back ninth places at Worlds is not an underachievement. It is the next bunch, the challengers, who have not kept pace internationally with their age group.

"I never ever, ever thought I'd make it this far. I've done so much more than I thought I could do," Robinson says of her career. "Not that I didn't have dreams and hopes. But six (national titles) is such a big number. I never thought I'd get so many. I think I'm just the classic late bloomer."

Robinson is the only female singles skater on the Canadian tour of Stars On Ice. She does a blues routine with Steven Cousins and American pairs skater John Zimmerman. And she has one solo number in the show.

"It's about a girl getting ready for a date," she explains. "I start in lingerie and I get dressed as the program goes on ... which is kind of the reverse of most skaters in a show program."