World Figure Skating Championships | The Canadians came to learn

One was participating in his first World Championships. The other tried to forget the setbacks of a checkered season. Wesley Chiu and Roman Sadovsky arrived with different goals, but they ended up inheriting the same fate.

Chiu finished 17^ewhile Sadovsky was satisfied with 19^e rank at the end of their free program on Saturday at the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal.

It’s difficult in their case to talk about performances below expectations, because there really weren’t any.

Chiu, 19 years old three days ago, arrived like a hair in the soup during the season after triumphing at the Canadian Championships in January. Otherwise, he had never made an international podium among seniors.

The Vancouver athlete landed an off-axis quadruple jump on his first attempt. The double rotation planned immediately afterwards never followed. Three errors in his first five figures undermined his chances of climbing the rankings.

A few days earlier, he had admitted how nervous he was at the start of his program on Thursday. “ [Aujourd’hui], I felt like any other day, but obviously it wasn’t, because it’s the World Championships. I made some costly mistakes. Some are more frustrating than others, because I know I could have done better. »

In the same vein, his teammate Sadovsky, absolutely brilliant during the short program, was not a shadow of himself in his sky blue sweater. A fall on his first jump and three floating landings on his next four jumps ruined his performance performed to the sound of a Soviet ballet.

“Overall, every element was worse than I usually do in training. And it made me push and strain more and it got worse. It will have been a complicated fight, but I am happy to have fought until the end,” he assured after his performance in the corridors of the Bell Centre.

Don’t make the same mistakes

These Worlds were only the fourth event in which Sadovsky took part this season, injured in an ankle and a knee due to an overly intense training sequence at the very start of the season.

Each time, he was thrown into the den of the wolf without apprehension given the importance of the different events. Before arriving in Montreal, he took part in the National Championships and the Four Continents Championship. He never really got the chance to gradually get back into the saddle.

In a context where he would not have been afflicted by his injuries, everything suggests that the volume and results of the 24-year-old athlete would have been very different. But in the circumstances, he is able to learn from his mistakes which led to a sluggish end to the season.

“I will have to be more careful at the start of the season and take fewer risks,” he said with a laugh, because at this stage of the competition, there was nothing more to do.

“Having time and training helps. But I didn’t get any. My limitation this year was something decisive,” he continued between two sips of water.

In the case of Chiu, still a little in shock at having been able to perform on such a grandiose stage, he admits to having been influenced by the pressure and the importance of the moment. He has repeated it often since the beginning of the week.

However, this experience will have allowed him to grow and learn, he says. After all, the proverbial process must exist if athletes keep using it as a scapegoat. Spectators at the Bell Center were able to witness, live, an athlete experiencing this famous process.

“I think there has been a big improvement mentally [cette année], just in the way I handle myself and behave in training. Over the course of the season, I feel like I improved my training and it showed in my competitions. My consistency also improved, especially in the second half of the season with the Nationals and the Four Continents. »

Let the battle begin

By virtue of its two results from the back of the grid, Canada will be deprived of a place at the World Championships next year in Boston. To keep two skaters in the men’s competition, the two final positions added together had to arrive under the number 28.

After careful calculation, the sum of their final results equals 36.

“Keeping our two places was very important,” Sadovsky said after reporters told him the fate that awaited the Canadian team.

“I don’t think it was our main concern, I don’t want to speak for Wesley, but we wanted to do our best and wait for the result,” added the Vaughan skater.

The fight will therefore be fierce at the next national championships, as the two skaters will battle for the only valid ticket to enter the TD Garden.

In a year of Olympic qualification, what’s more, reducing the number of passes by half is far from ideal for the Canadian team.

Malinin champion, Siao Him Fa goes back

The amazing French skater Adam Siao Him Fa gave a poor performance on Thursday during the presentation of his short program. The double European champion, predestined to reach the podium in Montreal, had been relegated to 19^e provisional rank out of the 24 qualified.

During his long program, Siao Him Fa was smoking hot. Usually, the sixth skater to start is never a title contender. So much so that for the sake of fantasy and to impress in front of a cheering audience, he ended his program with a backflip, a forbidden figure. The judges took two penalty points away from him, but he still accumulated 284.39. Nearly 50 points ahead of their opponents.

When the score of 280.85 given to two-time defending champion Shoma Uno appeared, the Frenchman exploded. He could no longer hold still, because there were only two skaters left in the running. A place on the podium was therefore assured for him.

Siao Him Fa ended up being beaten by the Japanese Yuma Kagiyama, penultimate athlete to pass.

Then, the young prodigy Ilia Malinin made his entrance to close his Worlds. The American gave a performance that was as fair as it was phenomenal. As intoxicating as it is fiery. The 19-year-old athlete gave a performance that came very close to perfection. The spectators gathered in the amphitheater will have to mourn the fact that they will never again witness, on site, such a remarkably executed program.

The angel-haired, ocean-eyed skater earned a final score of 333.76, more than 24 points behind Kagiyama. Only with his points from the free program (227.79) would he have finished among the top ten in the final ranking.