Saturday, January 17, 2009

More Than A Silver Lining

A little bit of simple math told Meagan Duhamel and Craig Buntin that it probably wasn't going to happen on this day. But it never hurts to try.
Duhamel and Buntin had to settle for the silver medals in the senior pairs event at the 2009 BMO Canadian figure skating championships at the Credit Union Centre. Although "settle" hugely understates the sentiment they'll carry home with them from Saskatoon.
"We won a silver medal," Duhamel said emphatically after it was over.
That they surely did. But their hopes of a Canadian title pretty much died when Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison, the 2007 national champs, skated one mighty fine free skate before them and were rewarded with 126.21 points by the judges.
"It’s hard to start a program hearing somebody else’s scores that good," admitted Duhamel, 23, of Lively, Ont. "They got 126 and our personal best was 109. But we had a job to do. We came here to do two of the best skates that we can and we hoped to be rewarded with a gold medal from those two skates.
"Maybe we didn’t get a gold medal but we fought through."
The 116.76 points they earned for their free program might have one them a Canadian title on another night. Just not this one. Dube and Davison totalled 188.43 points overall, Duhamel and Buntin 182.50.
But if there is indeed victory in the struggle, than Duhamel and Buntin will claim one here.
"Did we come here to be Canadian champions? Yeah," said Buntin, 28, of North Vancouver, B.C. "But at no point in our program did we lose sight of that. I think we fought through everything out there. We fought through like champions, so I’m very happy."
They didn't wilt under the pressure of skating last in the competition
"We’re going to be twice as good next time because of the experience we got here," said Buntin. "We beat our personal best by (7.16) points. We got a world-class score in the short. And now we have this under our belt ... The performance and the drive and the fight was there and that, I think, is our biggest strength as a team and that’s just going to keep us going forward."
*****
For now, they're Canadian senior pairs bronze medallists.
What happens next for Mylene Brodeur and John Mattatall, they'll have to wait and see.
Not that they're letting the uncertainty spoil this moment.
"We're honoured to be here," said Mattatall, 26, of Wallace, N.S. "It's pretty special. It's been a long road. Last May, we didn't even think we'd be competing this year. To be here is pretty cool."
Imagine, then, what they'd think about representing Canada at the Four Continents Championship in Vancouver next month or the world championships in Los Angeles in March?
That's still a story for another day.
Skate Canada wants to give Anabelle Langlois and Cody Hay — the 2008 national champions who withdrew from this competition because of injury — one last chance to prove their fitness before the two season-ending competition. Technical director Michael Slipchuk said the association expects to decide "within 7-10 days" whether Langlois' ankle injury has recovered sufficiently enough to allow she and Hay to go to Four Continents and worlds.
If the answer is no, those tickets will go to Brodeur and Mattatall.

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