It's In The Stars

If you build them, they will come.
Remember the glory days of Canadian figure skating, when Skate Canada would routinely fill an NHL building in places like Edmonton or Vancouver for its national championships? Putting 17,000 in the house was the norm rather than the exception in the 1990s. Even as recently as 2001, General Motors Place in Vancouver was packed to the rafters for the world championships.
How times have changed. Seven years later, the sport is still trying to recover from the damage done by the judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Long gone are the Kurt Brownings and Elvis Stojkos that filled those buildings. Now times are tough economically.
So when the 2009 BMO figure skating championships come to the Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon and 4,092 is the top attendance figure for a session, you know you've still got some rebuilding to do.
"We always want to sell out a venue," Skate Canada CEO William Thompson said in assessing this week in Saskatoon. "We're realistic right now. A good-sized venue (for this event) is something in the 6,000-7,000 seat range. We're not ready to go back to an NHL-sized rink yet. We'd love to go back there someday but we'll see how it goes.
"If we continue to produce great skaters and the results are fair, I think the public will get interested."
It's all about the stars in this sport. And Thompson is enthused about the prospects in that area. Canadian skaters won three medals at the 2008 world championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, and two of them — Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (silver, ice dance), along with Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison (pairs) — will be back for more in Los Angeles in March.
With a pair of Grand Prix event victories in the fall, Joannie Rochette showed she's ready to challenge for the women's podium. And the astonishing free skate she delivered here Saturday did nothing but enhance that possibility.
Patrick Chan also won twice during the Grand Prix season and made the series final. He's pushing ever closer to the world's best.
"I think what you saw here is we have athletes in every discipline that are capable of contending for a medal and that, for me, is the key point at this juncture as we head into next year," said Thompson with an eye toward the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Now the key is for the likes of Chan and Rochette and Virtue and Moir to become household names. The countdown to Vancouver should help in that area. So would another raft of medals in Los Angeles.
"Regaining interest in the sport is going to revolve around having great skaters," said Thompson. "We're on track for that and hopefully people will get interested in seeing the Patrick Chans and Tessa and Scotts and Joannie Rochettes. They really are great athletes.
"Given where we are today, I'm feeling really good about where we're headed next year for Olympics. We're looking forward to that."
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Gary Lunn, the federal Minister of State for Sport, is in the house today to take in the men's free skate final, which is just under way at the Credit Union Centre.
A CBC radio reporter asked Lunn for his take on the event, which Patrick Chan leads by 17 points after his brilliant short program on Friday night.
"I'm not going to start picking favourites," said Lunn. "There's so many skaters here and they're all giving their best. They've all worked hard. So we're here to cheer them all on.
"Obviously, there's some that stand out. Patrick Chan is doing so well and there's so much energy behind him. But we're here to cheer them all."
And that, my friends, is what we call the politically correct answer.