With Keegan Messing missing, rebuilding Canadians on outside looking in after team figure skating openers
BEIJING Staying positive about testing negative.
That was the frame of mind for Keegan Messing, who got the COVID-hook while the rest of Team Canada boarded their charter flight to China for the Winter Olympics last week.
While it came as a say-what?' surprise for the Canadian men's figure skating champion, he was always likely the most at risk for infection, given that he had to fly commercial and cross a frontier - from his home in Anchorage, Alaska, which has no certified testing facility, to Vancouver, where the rest of the Canadian squad mustered - before reorienting for the Far East.
Somewhere in his travels and travails, the 30-year-old contracted the virus. Cut to the chase, he tested positive when swabbed for the trans-Pacific leg of his odyssey, 96 hours in advance of departure, as per the rules. That's the PCR that tripped him up. As of Friday, he'd had two negative results, provisionally good enough for a clearance certificate to get on another aircraft, though he still required a third and fourth supplemental negative test outcome.
This is our pandemic world and COVID doesn't give a toss about the Olympics.
Best-case scenario, Messing would be on a plane headed for a hub'' city on Saturday, commercial flight, then brought into Beijing. Though no one was yet certain via which route. What's certain is that Messing will not be available for the men's long skate portion of the team event on Sunday. If the stars align, he'll be good to go in the individual competition, where men are first up, short program on Tuesday. If not, there is at least a chance that he'd have to be replaced - substitute incoming - by Wesley Chiu, the bronze medallist at Canadians.
Follow?
Also certain and quite obvious on Day 0'' was that the figure skating platoon missed Messing's presence in the team event, which got rolling Friday hours before the opening ceremonies and will unspool over two more days, Sunday and Monday.
This is a stupidly complicated schedule. And a dopey event, to be honest. It's only been on the Games' menu since Sochi and devalues medals, if you ask me. But Canada is defending Olympic gold, that glitter-decorated cadre from Pyeongchang - Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, Patrick Chan, Kaetlyn Osmond - coalescing for top o the podium glory. All boogying gone down the retirement road, alas, as figure skating in Canada struggles to reinvent itself, straddling old and new at the moment, which isn't a particularly happy medium.
Team gold redux was always out of the question in Beijing; Canada just doesn't boast that kind of transcendent figure skating talent at this time. Any podium finish would have been a stretch, if exquisite performances were turned in all around and other top teams cocked up and Messing was in the mix.
That would be a no and a no and a no.
By end of the day - after men's short, ice dance rhythm (short, basically) and pairs short - Canada was sitting sixth among the 10 countries contesting and in danger of not making the top-five cut to qualify for the free skate conclusion. The U.S. is intermediate leader, followed by the Russian Olympic Committee'' - we'll just call them Russia - and China.
Roman Sadovsky, Canada's No. 2 male, had a shaky debut, two-footing his opening quad salchow, turned into a triple anyway, then over-rotating on the triple lutz front end of his combination, with a double toe instead of a triple toe at back end. Eighth place, with a score of 71.06. Three-time world champion Nathan Chen, from the U.S., was miles ahead up top, with 111.71, just .11 short of the world record held by defending champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, who's not in the team event, isn't even in Beijing yet.
Kind of disappointing, honestly,'' said the 23-year-old Torontonian. The quad salchow is a comfort jump for me. It was very successful this season. There was just a slight mishap on the takeoff that didn't allow me to pull in.''
To be fair, Sadovsky hadn't expected to be named to the team event and only got the news of his emergency deployment the night before.
Asked if he'd talk to Messing, the silver medallist from Canadians just a few weeks ago responded: I haven't really been in touch with him. We're not that close, to be honest.''
With just three points in the kitty - awarded by ranking - Team Canada was looking at a rockface climb to even rejoin the upper half pack, although drawing an emotional boost from tapping ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, world bronze medallists and the country's best shot at a medal here in their discipline.
Energetic and splashy as usual, in matching his n' her tangerine costumes, skating to an Elton John medley, the national champions were slightly off the best they've shown this season, shedding technical points on twizzles and a step sequence, for a score of 82.72. Not that they sounded discontented afterwards, Poirier insisting that, nope, that wasn't a frown on his face as the music ended.
Absolutely not. It was probably my tired face.''
The rhythm dance is two-and-a-half minutes long.
We were really proud of our performance today,'' Poirier continued. It was really settled, we didn't force anything. Just felt really happy to be back on Olympic ice.''
Like Messing, Gilles and Poirier were in Pyeongchang but never got a sniff at the team event because the veteran gang had drawn a bead on gold, had a collective strategy for the thing, and no room in the boat for Olympic arrivistes.
A last minute about-face by Chinese authorities has permitted some fans access to the venues for competitions. About 250 spectators were present Friday at the Capital Indoor Stadium, and still they didn't make as much noise as the Team Canada contingent surrounding the skaters in their kiss n' cry pod and more Canadian athletes in the stands.
We just did nationals with nobody and you could hear a pin drop,'' said Gilles. Having the opportunity to have anybody in the stands to perform for is really nice. You feel that energy.''
They were fourth in the ice dance segment. And that's without France's Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron - two-time world champions, silver in Pyeongchang - even bothering to participate in the team event.
Pairs closed out Day 1, with a fifth-place effort from Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro. The duo, at their second Games together (her third), put up a season-best 67.34, skating to Hold on Tight'', with Moore-Towers faltering slightly on their side-by-side triple toeloops.
It wasn't exactly exactly what we wanted but the foal for the short program in the team event was to come out and get a season's best,'' said Marinaro. Checking that first box off a long list of goals for next two weeks is a big momentum push.''
Two-time world champions and Pyeongchang silver medallists Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, brilliants from China, soared far above everybody.
Moore-Towers and Marinaro are both good pals with Messing - he's continuing to train in Vancouver - and were feeling deeply his absence.
We're heartbroken,'' said Moore-Towers, who's been communicating with Messing daily. I think he's in good spirits. The best person to deal with this kind of crisis is Keegan Messing.''
Marinaro: We definitely miss him but he's handling it 100 times better than any other member would have on Team Canada.''
Moore-Towers: Than we would.''
Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno