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Mel's Editorial#11: February 5, 2005I have been promising a report on my attendance at Canadian Nationals for some time now, and well, the time has finally come. I'll be writing an editorial highlighting something from each discipline, so to begin, I'd like to start with my favourite event - pairs. I came into these nationals with a lot of hopes and expectations. It's not any secret that I prefer the teams who train with Richard Gauthier in St. Léonard, and I was wishing with all my might for a 1-2 finish from Marcoux & Buntin and Wakamatsu & Fecteau, with a solid performance from the less-experienced but equally appealing team of Bergeron & Davison. Was I in for the event of a lifetime! After I was booked on four different flights in a desperate effort to get from Chicago to London before the pairs began their short program, my friends and I finally arrived at the John Labatt Centre on Thursday evening. We'd just missed the ladies' short and the first two pairs, including medal contenders Langlois & Archetto, but there was time to settle into some empty seats near our friends before the St. Léo pairs came out. They were nervous, we may have been even more nervous. I'll never forget the way we erupted when Utako landed her throw like she'd owned them for years, how we leapt to our feet without any hesitation, when the CTV camera zoomed in on our celebration, complete with Québec flags and signs. For us, it was like seeing a dream finally be within reach. Perhaps I should back up a bit. My friends and I have followed Jean-Sébastien Fecteau's career with great interest, partially because, well, we know him. We see him skate whenever we can and when we can't make it, we scour the messages boards for results and reports hourly. I have seen firsthand how much he has put into his career and how much raw talent he possesses, from his strong footwork underneath complicated lifts to the way I can use my own fingers to count the number of jumps he has missed in competition. Perhaps this is why I found tears welling up in my eyes before Utako & Jean-Sé were even half finished with their free skate to the "Last Emperor." Maybe the reason why I felt a surge of joy in my heart as the program ended was because I've taken out such an investment in his skating. I celebrate his success, work through his failures, but above all, support him in a quest for a dream that, three years ago, seemed out of reach. Three years ago, at the 2002 Canadian National Championships in Hamilton, Valérie Saurette & Jean-Sébastien Fecteau delivered a dismal free skate that plummeted them to fifth place, a whole two spots away from making the Olympic team. Four years earlier, in 1998, they'd only missed the trip to Nagano by a hair. Valérie retired and, at 26 years old, it seemed logical that Jean-Sé would do the same. But dreams don't often bring logic to the table, do they? Instead of quitting, Fecteau and Richard Gauthier did something that the skating world would doubt for the next three years. They brought a lovely singles skater over from Japan. Utako Wakamatsu had a wonderful presence and a soft quality, but not the big triples. She was getting buried in a Japanese field that grew deeper and deeper by the day. They convinced her to switch to pairs, move to Montréal, and re-learn everything she'd previously believed skating to be. Within eight months, they had won their sectional and were headed to the National Championships when disaster struck - Utako sustained a knee injury in practice on a throw and for the next year, the throw jump would be this team's downfall. So many gave up faith, but my friends and I, we never did. We'd been talking for months about our favourite québecois finally earning higher than a bronze medal at Nationals, earning his first trip to Worlds without having to first wait for someone else to pull out. So when the final standings came in on Saturday evening and Wakamatsu & Fecteau were hanging on to the silver medal, well, our celebration certainly caused quite a ruckus at the end of the arena. It's hard to say how it feels until you experience it yourself. To see someone you know surpass his goal for the year right in front of your very eyes, to see a girl who has sacrificed everything have a beautiful moment in the spotlight, to see those silver medals hanging around their necks, glistening in the bright lights of an excited arena...it's incredible. A lot of people were disappointed that night - Langlois & Archetto had hoped to finally win a National title, Marcoux & Buntin were really hoping for a clean skate to propel them into Worlds, but Wakamatsu & Fecteau were just hoping to step onto the podium. Last year, they were dismissed by so many people as a pair that would never make it. I'm so proud to say that their time has come. For on that podium, no one shone brighter than the veteran from Thetford Mines and the tiny bundle of energy from across the Pacific. Archives -- Contact -- Features -- Guestbook -- Links -- Webmistress (c)2004-7 Melanie L. Hoyt All rights reserved. |