Rocket may be set to launch
By TERRY JONES, EDMONTON SUN
DORTMUND, Germany -- So what if the great Canadian figure skating streak has come to an end? We've got another one going! Much is being made - except by Emanuel Sandhu, who says he didn't have a clue - of Canada's streak of putting people on the podium at Worlds coming to a conclusion at 22 years here.
But Canada's run of 16 years without putting a female singles skater on the podium will be tied here today.
Karen Magnussen made it in 1972 and Canada waited 16 years until Liz Manley made it to the podium at Worlds after she won Olympic silver in Calgary 1988.
Will this streak stretch to 22 years?
Or maybe, with a post-Olympic retirement here and a post Olympic-retirement there, will Joannie (Rocket) Rochette get there at the Calgary 2006 Worlds?
Calgary, where Magnussen won at the 1972 Worlds, and Manley medalled at the '88 Olympics, is where our women win.
Hope. Nope. Hope. Nope. Hope ...
IS SHE THE NEXT ONE?
From one jump to the next you look at a kid like Rochette and wonder if she'll be the next female star of Canadian figure skating. Or if there will ever be a next.
She's just turned 18 and she's going to jump from finishing 17th at Worlds last year in Washington, D.C., to somewhere around ninth this year. Ninth is where she sits after the short program yesterday.
If Rochette moves up two spots in the free-skate final today, she'll have recorded Canada's best result here.
At practices here this week Rochette's turned some heads by landing quads. Only one woman, 16-year-old Miki Ando of Japan at a Junior Grand Prix, has ever landed one in competition.
That's the same Ando who is third here, one spot ahead of four-time world champion Michelle Kwan competing in her 11th Worlds, one spot back of teammate Shizuka Arakawa and two back of leader Sasha Cohen of the U.S.
Rochette also came here and landed a triple-Lutz for the first time in her career in competition and so far has done it twice under the big top, including the front end of the combination in the short program.
But like teammate Jennifer Robinson, who has so far come here and skated as clean and competently as is possible at this stage of her career but sits 13th for her troubles, Canada is out of contention because we still haven't shown the world a woman who can do a triple-triple combination.
Hope. Nope. Hope. Nope. Hope ...
Canada is a country which has been waiting since Barbara Ann Scott, the 1948 Olympic champion, to have an ice queen to rule the world for more than a moment.
Robinson would have made a wonderful one, the way she's carried herself, but her career ends here in the free-skate final today, going nowhere slow.
Her record at Worlds: 19th, 21st, 18th, 8th, 15th, 9th, 9th and likely about 13th here. That's nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope and nope.
Rochette, a year and a half older than Cynthia Phaneuf, the 16-year-old who won the Canadian championship in Edmonton but wasn't trusted to skate for Canada here, is obviously the only hope for the Olympics and Calgary Worlds in 2006. And from ninth to third is a lot of ladder to climb in two years.
Until Rochette and/or Phaneuf crack the final flight in a final, they can't be considered hopes. But there's no knocking what the girl from Ile-Dupas, Que., has done here so far in what many are calling her breakthrough week in the sport.
"I feel I belong here,'' said Rochette. "But I know I have a lot to learn from the top girls to move up to the higher group.''
Rochette wants to prove she's mentally tough enough. That's been the major failing of Canadian women in this sport over the years.
"I was very happy I came here and was able to land the triple-Lutz in the qualifying and then come back and do it again under much more stressful conditions in the short program.''
READY FOR THE QUAD
Rochette says she wants to use the quad as a vault to take her to the top.
"I really want to do it. But I won't do it until I'm ready for it,'' she said of being secure enough in landing it to present the jump, first landed by Kurt Browning at the '88 Worlds in Budapest, in public.
"The first year I watched skating on TV, I'd go out and try jumps on ice. I really didn't know jumps," she said. "I liked watching Elvis Stojko. The look he had was so determined.''
It would be amazing to find a Canadian girl like that.
But with three Japanese in the top seven here (Fumie Sururi is seventh), there's a debate beginning to build about the odds of anyone from anywhere other than the land of the rising sun finding their way to the podium in the immediate future.
You might need a quad just to compete.
"It's coming,'' advised Robinson.
"Why wait?''
