There will probably only be one Canadian athlete under more pressure to deliver at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics than Patrick Chan, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue.
And his name is Sidney Crosby.
But a pleasant Wednesday evening in the merry month of May seemed an eternity away from the wintry dark of next February when many Canadians will be glued to their TV sets watching the action from Russia.
“There is going to be pressure,” admitted Chan, the three-time men’s world figure-skating champion, before performing with the Stars on Ice show at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
“But I have experienced that before and shown I can handle it by twice successfully defending the world title.”
And he indicated an off-shore Olympics will probably be less stressful than it was last time at home.
“Vancouver [2010 Winter Games] was nerve-wracking and it was so easy to get distracted because it was a home-nation Olympics,” Chan said.
“A little bit of [geographic] separation [in Sochi] doesn’t hurt.”
It’s almost certain Chan will be going in as the gold-medal favourite.
“It’s hard not to get excited about Sochi,” said Chan, who began his morning Wednesday at the Esquimalt Road McDonald’s, where he greeted customers for local children’s charities.
“I hope Canadians are getting excited for us.”
Last night was Chan’s first return to Victoria since his riveting performance during the 2011 Canadian championships where he set a world record combined score of 285.85 to win his fourth of six national men’s titles.
“It’s something I’ll always remember,” he said.
The Memorial Centre is also a special venue for Moir and Virtue, who made their senior debut in ice dance on Blanshard Street in the 2006 Skate Canada International. Four years later, they returned to B.C. to win gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
They are keenly aware of the history of figure skating in this country and its international successes.
How can you not be when the other Canadian headliners in the Victoria show included Olympic medallists Jeffrey Buttle and Joannie Rochette along with four-time world champion Kurt Browning?
Moir and Virtue, two-time world champions, said their favourite moment in Stars on Ice is the Champions section, when all the Canuck skaters in the troupe who have won a world championship [themselves, Chan, Buttle and Browning] come out for a skate that closes the first half of the show.
“I get goose-bumps everytime the five of us come out for that segment,” said Moir.
Moir and Virtue skated Wednesday night to Carmen, their set-piece of the 2013 season.
Meanwhile, it was a unique moment backstage for veteran Victoria coach Jean Westwood — who with Lawrence Demmy won the first four world ice dance championships for Great Britain starting in 1952 — as she prepared to finally meet Moir and Virtue.
Westwood was later instrumental in the development of Qualicum Beach’s Victor Kraatz, who with Shae-Lynn Bourne in 2003, became the first Canadians to win the world ice dance championship.
As Moir indicated, the current batch of Canadian figure skating stars will head to Sochi riding the shoulders of those who came before them.
So it was perhaps only fitting that it was the old vet Browning who received the largest standing ovation from the audience of 4,327 for his Singin’ in the Rain segment.
