Pressure? What pressure?
Langlois, Archetto in tough position following greats
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
They're it. And they're on.
It's one thing to have to follow the act of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. That's tough enough. But they're it. And if they don't get it done, the run is done.
Anabelle Langlois and Pat Archetto, skating out of the same Edmonton Royal Glenora Club as the Salt Lake Olympic gold medal winners, have been unfairly placed in the position of having to follow Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko, Brian Orser, Elizabeth Manley and the pairs and dance teams of Underhill & Martini, Wilson & McCall, Eisler & Brasseur, Bourne & Kraatz and Sale & Pelletier to save a streak of 22 consecutive seasons of putting Canadians on the podium at the World Figure Skating Championships.
They're it. And it's time to get on with it. Figure skating's regular season is over. The playoffs start now. And Edmonton's team, after an Oiler-like regular season, barely catching the final playoff position on the last stop on the schedule, is in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Grand Prix Final.
JUDGES' THINKING
If they are going to put themselves in position for international judges to be able to think of them in terms of podium placement at the World Figure Skating Championships three months from now in Dortmund, Germany, the Canadians will have to have a success this week.
"It's too much for a little girl like me to carry on my shoulders," laughs Langlois.
"We can't think of all that. We know Canada needs high-profile skaters again. But we can't worry about that too much. Like David and Jamie keep telling us, 'You can't carry Canada on your shoulders.'
"We know about the 22 years. It's a great legacy for figure skating in Canada. But it's a lot to take on. We know about it. We read about it. We're aware that Canadian figure skating officials have predicted we will make the podium and that's definitely our goal. But we need to want it for ourselves instead of thinking we could be letting Canada down," says the pint-sized package of personality.
"We don't feel we have to have that kind of pressure," says Archetto. "But we're putting pressure on ourselves. We want to make sure all the pressure we feel is from the inside, not the outside."
But there's more.
These two kids from Quebec have the extra burden of having to do something to inspire ticket sales for the Jan. 5-10 Canadian Figure Skating Championships in Edmonton.
Michelle Currie has been the local singles skater used as a poster girl for the event, but with her 10th-and 12th-place finishes at Skate America and NHK, she hasn't managed to manufacture any stampede to the ticket wickets. And Langlois and Archetto had pretty much stumbled and bumbled through their Grand Prix season until they hit the final stop at NHK in Japan two weeks ago.
"We tried to fix something that wasn't broken," said Langlois of the pair which finished fifth in the world last year, but could do no better than fourth at both Skate Canada and Trophee Lalique in France against so-so competition.
They finally qualifyed for the Grand Prix final with a second in the final stop in Japan.
"We definitely didn't start off the way we wanted to," she said.
"We made the mistake of listening to other people instead of doing what we do - what Jamie and David did - to be successful.
"We shouldn't have listened. We don't want to say who, but it wasn't our coach Jan Ullmark. It was people wanting to look after our best interests. But it was our fault for listening to them."
Archetto explains.
"We listened to people who told us we had to change our training to the European way to improve," he said.
"The Europeans do parts of their programs in practice and then put the parts together at the competition sites. The North American way has always been to do a complete run-through of the long and short programs every day.
"We only had a week back in Edmonton before we went to Japan, but we went back to our old way and it worked. We went back to normal and finished second."
Finishing fourth at Skate Canada in a field which was designed for them to experience success was the low point of the season.
ANOTHER STORY
But that, says Archetto, was another story, one you'll never read in The Hockey News.
"Anabelle's dress was way too tight," said Archetto.
"Our costumes are made in Montreal and we didn't get them until just before the event. Her outfit was so tight, the blood wasn't getting from the shoulders to her feet. A doctor explained that the major blood vessels through her shoulders restricted the blood from getting to her legs. If she'd been wearing her old dress it would have been a different story."
Any tighter and Anabelle might have found herself posing topless like Sale in the FHM magazine layout which hits the news stands this week. Langlois says she doesn't know about that, but at the end of the program she felt like ripping the dress off her back at the first opportunity.
"It was the top. From the chest up. It was a mesh material. It constricted my chest and arms. I couldn't breathe. I didn't want to tell Pat I wasn't feeling good. I never want to make excuses."
If nothing else it resulted in a scene to tell her grandchildren about.
"The lady who does our costumes was there at the competition and we went to the public restroom at the rink and she had out the scissors and the thread and needles and was ripping seams and everything, right there in the bathroom in front of everybody," she said.
The dress has been fixed, the training has been fixed. Now, if this wasn't a sport where competitions have been fixed ...
"I don't think first or second place is there for us," says Archetto. "But I think we can definitely make a move with two good performances. That's all we're trying to do is skate two good performances. We haven't done that this year."
That's the thing, says Langlois.
"To this point, we haven't shown improvement. We're now at the point of the season where we can't look back. We've been so fed up this year, we want to start it over. It's hard for the public to understand. Even for our parents it's hard to understand. I'm sure they're wondering if we've even been training."
