KITCHENER, Ont. - Patrick Chan knows the Olympic clock is ticking, the reminders are everywhere.
The Canadian skater finished a disappointing sixth at HomeSense Skate Canada International in his season debut, falling three times in his long program on Saturday. The 18-year-old from Toronto is on the mend from a torn left calf muscle that delayed the start of his season by several weeks, and Chan admitted with the biggest event of his career just around the corner, he is concerned.
"Every day someone is telling me, '82 days, 81 days.' It's definitely hard not to think about it," Chan said. "I doubt it will be a race (against time), but it is a concern of course."
Saturday marked 83 days to the Vancouver Games.
American Jeremy Abbott won the men's singles gold at The Aud with 232.99 points, scoring 155.01 in the free skate and landing the only quad jump of the night - a quad toe. Daisuke Takahashi of Japan took the silver with 231.31 overall, while Alban Preaubert of France won the bronze with 212.28.
Joey Russell of Labrador City, N.L., was 10th while Jeremy Penn of Vancouver, was 12th.
Skating to "The Phantom of the Opera," Chan opened with a dazzling triple Axel-double toe loop combination and followed it up with a triple flip-triple toe. But he started losing steam at the midway point, falling on a triple Axel, triple Lutz and triple Salchow in his one and only international competition before Vancouver.
"I'm just a little behind from all these guys, these guys are just flying jumps no problem," Chan said. "It's hard to watch them doing great, they're all doing awesome. I just feel a little late, I feel like the kid who's kind of (the slowest) in the class."
Chan scored 130.13 for his free skate and 198.77 overall, well off his best of 249.19 he racked up en route to winning last season's ISU Four Continents.
Chan had to pull out of the Cup of Russia last month because of his calf injury, suffered when his body was weakened by a bad bout of the flu picked up during training camp in the fall in Vancouver.
The injury itself isn't the problem now, said Chan, it's the weeks of preparation he's missing. The world championship silver medallist was noticeably winded after the music stopped, welling up enough energy to acknowledge the appreciative crowd that had given him a standing ovation before skating wearily off the ice.
"It's like I lost three-quarters of my gas tank halfway through the program and I was really disappointed in that," Chan said. "I trained very hard, it wasn't like I wasn't doing run-throughs every day, slacking off, I was doing my programs regularly. I was a little disappointed with the way my body handled itself around the end."
The young skater said there were definitely positives to take from the week. His triple Axel that gave him problems last season is noticeably stronger after an off-season of tinkering with the technique. Chan used video technology called Dartfish that allowed him to break down the movements and compare his jumps with other skaters.
"If you take my Axel from here and compare it to Four Continents (last winter), it's like night and day," Chan said. "I completely changed my technique, it's awesome, upper body is much straighter going into the Axel, and it worked. It's good to know I could do it here, and that means I'm doing the right thing."
He also remains the class of the field in everything else he does, from his precision footwork and spins to his elegant interpretation of the music.
Chan didn't qualify for next month's Grand Prix final in Tokyo, a long trip he wasn't keen on making anyway with his injury concerns and the fact he gets sick easily.
But this week marked his only international competition before the Olympics. He has one other event - the Canadian championships in London, Ont., in January. He said he talked with Skate Canada officials and they'll likely hold a simulation at his training base in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he'll don his costume and skate his routines for a panel of international judges.
"It's a good idea to do that, because I can kind of catch up," Chan said.
