Sports

Bryce Davidson and Jessica Dubé

1) Women think the Three Stooges are idiots, while guys think they’re hilarious.

2) Women love figure skating, guys not so much.

Men get it when guys on skates hip-check each other into boards. Dancing on ice in sequined costumes, they don’t get. Yet each year, something amazing happens when figure-skating championships are broadcast. Guys glance at the tube and stop dead in their tracks.

Initially, this might be because of scantily clad lady figure skaters, but then comes an epiphany, a firing of the male brain synapses sending the message: “This is amazing, they’ve got to be really strong to do that. They’re defying physics.”

The guy sits, hooked, for figure skating is the closest thing to poetry in motion that our species has ever devised.

According to the Associated Press’s 1993 National Sports Study in the U.S., the largest such poll ever taken, women’s figure skating was the second most popular spectator sport (after NFL football). Pairs skating, men’s figure skating and pairs ice dancing came in fifth to seventh place, after Major League Baseball in fourth and ahead of NBA basketball in ninth.

Women’s figure skating at the 1994 winter Olympics was watched by more people than the Super Bowl that year. Athleticism, beauty and a touch of showbiz: Figure skating is the hot-ticket event at the 2010 Winter Games.

In women’s singles this time around, Canada’s best hope is Joannie Rochette of Île Dupas, Que. She was fifth at the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, and more recently has won silver at both the Four Continents and world championships. “You train all your life for Olympic competition,” Rochette has blogged. “And, in the end, four minutes means everything to you. If you mess up, you have to wait another four years.”

In the men’s competition, the whole nation will be watching Ottawa’s Patrick Chan, 20, the odds-on favourite for a medal. In 2009, he defended his singles title at the Canadian Figure Skating Championship, became the International Skating Union’s World Championship silver medallist and was the Four
Continents champion. Chan has been skating for 15 years and in 2008, while still 17 years old, he became the youngest man to win the Canadian title.

Having a gold-medal contender is a big deal for Canada, considering that in 1948 Barbara Ann Scott became the first and last Canadian to bring home an Olympic gold medal in singles figure skating. No Canadian man has ever won it.

Brian Orser earned silver in 1984 and 1988. Elizabeth Manley’s electrifying free program at the 1988 Games in Calgary also scored silver. Kurt Browning did not hit the podium in 1988, 1992 or 1994, despite being a four-time world champion.

Elvis Stojko settled for a disappointing silver in both 1994 and 1998. He was victim of a controversial judgment the first time and a disabling groin injury the second.

Chan is no sure thing, as the drama increased when he tore a muscle in his left calf in early October. This injury caused him to withdraw from the ISU Grand Prix event in Russia that month, and was most likely a factor in his disappointing sixth-place finish at the HomeSense Skate Canada International in November.

Canadian pairs competitors are also looking strong for 2010 with three Canadian duos standing out: Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison; Meagan Duhamel and Craig Buntin; and Mylène Brodeur and John Mattatall.

Dubé, 22, and Davison, 23, both from Drummondville, Que., were the 2007 and 2009 Canadian champions and 2009 Four Continents silver medallists. Duhamel, 24, of Lively, Ont., and North Vancouver’s Buntin, 29, won silver last year and bronze in 2008 at the Canadian championships. Brodeur, 22, of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Mattatall, 27, of Tatamagouche, N.S., are the current national bronze medallists.

Bottom line: In a sport dominated in recent years by Russia, Japan, South Korea, Italy and the U.S., Canadian figure skaters are in a strong position to make it to the podium in February.