Skating's Odd Couple
Patrick Chan, the 16-year-old rising star of figure skating will never forget Osborne Colson, his mentor
Jan 14, 2007 04:30 AM
Randy Starkman
Patrick Chan's edges are deep and smooth, the intricate carvings of a figure skater many believe is destined to become Canada's next big thing.
The Toronto teenager is being compared to Brian Orser and Kurt Browning thanks to a set of precocious skills honed painstakingly, and sometimes painfully, under Osborne Colson, the brilliant yet mercurial legendary coach who died last summer at age 90.
They were figure skating's odd couple: the wide-eyed phenom and the crusty eccentric. Yet the results are indisputable as Chan vaulted up the Canadian ranks and, having just turned 16, is seen as the best skater in the world for his age.
This week's Canadian championships in Halifax mark the first time Chan won't glide on to the ice at nationals under Colson's watchful eye at rinkside. He won three straight national titles (pre-novice, novice and junior) under his tutelage before finishing a disappointing seventh last year in his first try as a senior.
The lessons preached by Colson, an icon who worked with greats Barbara Ann Scott and Donald Jackson, extended beyond the rink. He hectored young Chan about his manners, telling him to cut his food into small pieces, and taught him how to present himself to people.
"Because he believed one day I would meet the Queen or the president or prime minister, he prepared me very well for what was to come," said Chan. "Because he believed that I would reach the top one day."
Chan vowed to Colson on his deathbed that he would skate his best for him and wears a gold medallion belonging to the man he regarded as a grandfather. It bears his former coach's initials, H.O.C. – Harry Osborne Colson.
"He would wear it all the time," said Chan. "I just said, `It was part of him; it will become part of me.'"
It was not always an easy relationship. Chan's father, Lewis, remembers thinking the partnership wouldn't last more than six months given the coach's frequent intemperate outbursts, but felt that his son could learn a lot in the meantime.
"He was really from a different era, like one of these old kung fu masters from China," said Lewis Chan.
Patrick smiles ruefully as he recalls Colson's tirades.
"Anybody that knows him knows that he could say some pretty nasty stuff," he said. "He's so old, he's in that era, his mindset's still in the years when he was training."
The stories about Colson quirks are legendary. There was the time that a fire alarm went off in a hotel in the middle of the night at a skating event and Colson refused to leave his room. He was later heard to say he'd rather perish in the fire than have someone see him in his pajamas.
The Chan family was at Colson's bedside when he died. Patrick finds that he often thinks about what "Mr. Colson" – as he always called him – would do when he's struggling with his skating.
"Maybe because he was so old and I was so young, we filled in the blanks," said Patrick. "We had our ups and downs, but overall by the last couple of months, couple of years we were over those ups and downs and we knew ourselves very well. We pretty much accepted him as family and he accepted us as family."
Chan is now being coached at Toronto's Granite Club by Shin Amano, a former Japanese champion with great technical skills. His gentle and laid-back nature makes him the antithesis of Osborne, whom he often assisted.
Don Laws, who was coached by Osborne and is best known for guiding American Scott Hamilton to four world titles and Olympic gold, also signed on this week as a co-coach. Chan has trained in Florida with the veteran U.S. coach.
"I think he's absolutely a gem for Canada," said Laws. "I knew Donald Jackson well and I've seen Brian Orser come up and I've seen a number of the champions, like Kurt Browning, and he's got a bit of all of what they had."
Browning, for one, isn't about to quibble with the assessment. What the four-time world champion finds most appealing about the young skater he sometimes tutors at the Granite Club, where both train, is the irresistible combination of innocence and joy in his performance.
"What you do see is what you get. And people trust that when they watch you skate," said Browning.
"Sometimes it's something that some skaters never get. They can be top five in the world and not have what he has already."
Chan is developing the whole package as a skater. His movements, spins and steps are of an incredibly high quality for someone who's barely cut his teeth in the senior ranks. His long program to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, designed by noted choreographer Lori Nichol, is remarkably complex and mature.
His challenge right now is developing a consistent triple Axel. He landed a quadruple toe at a summer training camp in Barrie with jumping-meister Doug Leigh, but it is the triple Axel that "separates the men from the boys," as a Granite Club coach put it to Chan.
His batting average is at about 40 to 50 per cent and the jump is the key to achieving his goal of qualifying for the world championships in Tokyo in March.
Chan comes from a sporting family – they participate in everything from skiing to dancing. His parents, Karen and Lewis, met at a table tennis tournament. They were both born in Hong Kong – Lewis moving when he was 4 to Montreal, where he became a provincial table tennis champion, and Karen arriving in Ottawa to study in her 20s.
An avid tennis player, Karen Chan swung a racket until she was eight months pregnant with Patrick, their only child.
"I think she wanted to go skiing, too, but I disallowed that," jokes Lewis, a lawyer who is chief of staff to provincial Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Mike Colle.
Patrick was a superb skier growing up in Ottawa and wanted to give hockey a try when he was 6. His mother convinced him he should first develop his skills through figure skating. He never left it.
A Grade 11 student at Ecole Secondaire Etienne Brulé, Chan maintains a B-plus average and considers physics his best subject. He enjoys tinkering with car parts and is thinking about pursuing mechanical engineering at university.
He's anxious to start driving lessons now that he turned 16 on Dec. 31.
Chan, who speaks Cantonese as well as French, is proud of his heritage.
"I'm very happy that I'm a Chinese-Canadian," he said. "It doesn't mean you have to be Caucasian to skate. You could be black. You could be Chinese. Whatever. I'm very proud I'm Chinese and represent the Chinese community ... I really like my culture. I love the food. I want to go to China one day when I'm older ..."
He has typical teenage passions; his mom often struggles to get him off MSN.
"Favourite movie?" said Chan. "Gosh, I'm such a geek. Lord of the Rings, I guess."
Elvis Stojko, a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic silver medallist, said the next few years may be tough as he adjusts to the changes to his body, but believes his mentality is of the type where little will faze him.
"He has the goods. It is just a matter of him creating his own winning formula," said Stojko.
Chan embraces the opportunity to be a role model, something instilled in him by his parents and "Mr. Colson."
"Mr. Colson always wanted me to be a perfectionist, be a good skater, be a good role model. I just want to try to expose what Mr. Colson projected as the future of figure skating. I want to for sure become the best skater I can and try to accomplish what he thought I could be in the future." |
显身卡
还是觉得他眼睛有点豆鸡...
ABC，美籍華裔
華裔都懂得粵語啊，以后出國找KWAN，小CHAN，圓圓溝通一下
