Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Erratic Sandhu proves mystifying
By STEVE BUFFERY -- Toronto Sun
Richmond Hill skater Emanuel Sandhu has suffered more meltdowns this season than the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The only difference is the TSE eventually will recover. Nobody is quite sure about Sandhu.
Once considered the heir apparent to three-time world champion Elvis Stojko, who will retire after this season, Sandhu has continued to mystify and irritate coaches, fans and Skate Canada officials with erratic performances.
Sandhu's entire career has been about flirting with perfection and then crashing down in the very next program.
At Skate Canada last month, the Vancouver-based skater dazzled the crowd with a tremendous short program, which included a quadruple/triple jump combination, to finish second behind Russian star Alexei Yagudin. Sandhu then fell apart in the free skate and dropped to fifth.
This past weekend at the Lalique Trophy in Paris -- another Grand Prix event -- Sandhu placed a mediocre sixth in the short and then finished a pathetic 10th in the free skate. He ended up ninth overall, behind such nobodies as Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland and Yamato Tamura of Japan.
What is particularly frustrating to those in the know is this -- when he's on, Sandhu, 22, is one of the best men's singles skaters in the world.
He has a rare infusion of brilliant artistic interpretation with all the technical tricks, a combination of Toller Cranston and Kurt Browning.
SC officials have no doubt that both Sandhu's 2001-2002 short and long programs are winners at the highest levels, if he can only manage to put them together back-to-back.
"I monitored his programs this summer and they are brilliant," said Louis Stong, AC director of skating development. "If he ever does it (together), even Yagudin would be hard-pressed (to win)."
Stong said Sandhu's piano-inspired free skate program, done properly, includes two different quads and a triple axel-triple toe loop, triple loop combo. His short, performed to an outfit called Safri Duo, also is a winner.
But something in his psyche keeps preventing him from breaking through at the international level. Stong believes Sandhu could challenge the great Yagudin on a consistent basis if he improves mentally.
"But there's something totally different in the makeup of those two boys," he said. "Yagudin is a killer ... he knows how to do it."
Since breaking on to the international scene with a brilliant second-place performance at the 1998 Canadian nationals, Sandhu has teased the figure skating world and has remained an enigma off the ice. In the summer of 2000, he disappeared for a few weeks. And before bombing out in the long at Skate Canada, he claimed his hotel room was haunted.
Stong is hopeful Sandhu's inner demons will dissipate as he gets older, using former tennis great Bjorn Borg as an example of how a talent finally emerged once the psyche was looked after.
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