About Me

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Delta, British Columbia, Canada
I took very early retirement from teaching in '06 and did some traveling in Europe and the UK before settling down to do some private tutoring. As a voracious reader, I have many books waiting in line for me to read. Tell me I shouldn't read something, and I will. I'm a happy, optimistic person and I love to travel and through that believe that life can be a continuous learning experience. I'm looking forward to traveling more some day. I enjoy walking, cycling, water aerobics & and sports like tennis, volleyball, and fastpitch/baseball. I'm just getting into photography as a hobby and I'm enjoying learning all the bits and bobs of my digital camera. My family is everything to me and I'm delighted to be the mother of two girls and the Gramma of a boy and a girl. I may be a Gramma, but I'm at heart just a girl who wants to have fun.

Monday, January 18, 2010

A is for Athletes

It's the beginning of Round 6 of ABC Wednesday, the brainchild of Denise Nesbitt. To view other contributions, click here.

Will Canada win gold in figure skating?

The Canadian National Figure Skating Championships were held in London, Ontario this past weekend. Fortunately, I was flipping channels on Saturday and noticed it was being televised.

I managed to catch the Men's Short program and saw 19-year-old Patrick Chan give an incredible performance. I missed the long program on Sunday, but Patrick made the front cover of the Vancouver Sun newspaper this morning, so I'm very excited that he'll be representing Canada at the Olympics in less than a month. If you're interested in reading more about Patrick Chan, click on his official website here.

There has been a bit of controversy about Patrick's recent dismissal of his coach Don Laws and his change to choreographer Lori Nichol and Christy Krall from Colorado Springs, Colo. Last year, Patrick had a severe case of the flu and a calf injury which kept him from valuable training time. However, he is back and in full fighting form, ready for the 2010 Olympics.



I saw the Ladies Final on Saturday, too, and watched as 23-year-old Joannie Rochette (right) won her sixth Canadian Championship. She looked so graceful, yet athletic, as she easily beat 2nd place finisher 22-year-old Cynthia Phaneuf (below)who will join her as Canada's representatives in the Ladies' program. You can see Joannie's official website here. Joannie won the silver medal in the 2009 World Figure Skating Championships, so we're really hopeful that she will win the gold here in her home country. You can read about her skating career here on Wikipedia.

Don't count out Cynthia Phaneuf, though! She won the Junior Canadian National Championship in 2004 and has also won medals in 2005 and 2009. I absolutely loved her artistic interpretation of the music from Mission Cleopatra on Saturday, and if it hadn't been for a couple of mistakes, she might have beaten Joannie.






And of course don't forget about our Pairs champions Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison and the Ice Dancing champions Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue.
In the Vancouver Sun today it was reported that all members of our Figure Skating Team "have been on the circuit for at least two seasons and the medal collection is impressive. Between the bunch of them, they have also won five world championship medals."
So keep your eyes on Canada for winning some medals in Figure Skating.

This is the sport that I will be watching next month as I became interested in it years and years ago when I learned how to skate. Although I never had any pretensions of becoming famous in this area, one of my daughters did compete up to a certain level until we discovered her feet were a bit crooked. And that was that. *sigh*

28 comments:

Jinksy said...

Watching skating is good enough for me - doing it is best left to dreaming!

Sylvia K said...

Love the ice skating, too! Like Jinksy, watching is good enough for me -- but then at my age most things are!! Great post for the day! Hope you have a great day!

Sylvia

photowannabe said...

The ice skating is my favorite thing to watch. They are truly athletes. Nice post for the letter A.

Carolyn Ford said...

Fabulous photos of ice skaters! They are, indeed, incredible "athletes."

Rune Eide said...

I hope they do. I've always been impressed by the people managing all those fancy movements. I can't even stay on my feet!

Roger Owen Green said...

My wife watches the figure skating, but invariably I catch some of it. I remember Rochette back when she was young (and she's only 23!)

The controversies about switching coaches is all part of the sport, it seems.

As a new part of the ABC Wednesday team, thank you.

Janie said...

I love to watch ice skating and ice dancing. The grace and balance of the performers always amazes me.

Liz Hinds said...

Is it a new round already? Gosh.

Tumblewords: said...

I was never very good at it, but love to watch these lithe souls scratch the ice. Great photos and links.

mrsnesbitt said...

Never been able to get away with skating! I lift my hats to these people!

Sheila @ A Postcard a Day said...

I've never even tried! The excitement for the forthcoming Games must be mounting in Canada.

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