Canadian Championships: Roman Sadovsky's (not so) excellent adventures
The fact that the 2020 national champion is present and ready to compete in Calgary, and with his skates here with him, truly is a triumph in itself. He should know.
CALGARY — It’s probably been one of the most anticipated arrivals of these Canadian figure skating championships. Let’s just say a whole lot of folks apparently are quite familiar with the trials and tribulations that Roman Sadovsky has endured this season, which finally seem ready to end at WinSport Arena. And they’re happy to let him know about it.
“Everyone I walked by today said ‘oh, you made it. Do you have skates?’ I’m a walking joke at this point,” Sadovsky said with a laugh.
As the old saying goes, at some point all you can do is laugh. Especially if you’ve had the kind of bad luck that has literally followed Sadovsky around the globe in the last few months. If you’re looking for someone to speak as an expert on travel woes, well, Sadovsky is definitely your guy at this point.
As you know if you’re been regular followers of this space (and hopefully you are), Sadovsky suffered an ankle injury during training back in August that lingered into the fall. It forced him to withdraw from Skate Canada International, his lone Grand Prix assignment, but the intent was for him to compete at a pair of Challenger Series events to get him set up for this week’s national championships. But then the ‘fun’ really began for him.
Sadovsky was scheduled to make his season debut in Poland in November, but while he made it to Warsaw without incident, the luggage carrying his skates got lost during a connection in Munich. He’d even placed an AirTag (one of those handy dandy Apple tracking chips) in his skate bag to keep track of its whereabouts. Didn’t help, as it turned out.
“Went back to the airport (in Munich) to search for them. I had the AirTag in the luggage, so I knew where it was. I called (airport staff) up and said ‘I can see it. It’s there.’ But they couldn’t find it,” he explained. “So it was like two or three days later, the event’s over. I had to change my tickets, go back to where I saw the bag and I did find it. It turned out the actual luggage tag ripped off, so they had a strange bag but they had no idea what it was.”
Then his attention turned to Golden Spin of Zagreb in Croatia in early December. But Mother Nature tossed one hell of a curveball in his direction.
“It was a crazy snowstorm in Europe. We flew there and they wouldn’t let us land, so we flew back,” he said. “We landed in St. John’s and we thought, all right, we’ll try to recuperate and get back. But then it started snowing in St. John’s, so we never really made it. We made it to Toronto, but we missed our connection to go back to Europe.”
As he says in this video on his YouTube channel, you can’t make this stuff up. So that was that. And now you know why Sadovsky has had so many people genuinely happy he’s at Canadians and ready to compete.
And yes, he does feel good to go for the first time this season.
“I’m very ready. We had a full year to prep,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m super excited. Trying new stuff, a new style of programs. Just a lot of things to look forward to. It’s an amazing arena. This is my 10th nationals, and I’ve never been at a nationals where the rink is Olympic sized.”
Sadovsky is the only skater in the field with a national title to his credit, having won the men’s crown in 2020. And he’ll tell you the skater that will compete this week isn’t anything close to then guy that won four years ago.
“I’ve had so many different kinds of experiences. Immense highs, immense lows and everything in between,” he said. “I’m definitely a different skater than I was in 2020. One hundred per cent. Every year, every competition, every time I’m learning something. That’s probably the best part of skating.”
In a bit of a coincidence, that nationals in 2020 was a qualifier for what should have been a World Championships in Montreal. However, as well all know, that event got scuttled by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now here we are again, four years later, with a Worlds in Montreal as the big prize.
“The last time it was in Montreal, I did miss it. So there was a disappointment factor there. It did get cancelled, so I couldn’t cry too much about it,” he said. “I’ve heard from skaters who have been to Olympics, but (still say) a World Championships at home is really special. I’d love to know what that’s like.”
And he’s in Calgary to chase that opportunity. That’s a win already.
Men’s title up for grabs
The starting order for the short programs at Canadians is largely determined by the finish at the previous year’s nationals. But with Keegan Messing now retired, the role of skating last on Friday falls on the shoulders of Conrad Orzel, who had a breakthrough nationals last year with a silver medal.
“It’s definitely going to be a new experience for me,” he said Thursday. “This is nationals, this is the biggest competition in Canada. Skating last is a huge honour and I think I’m going to manage it well. I don’t think I’m going to struggle with it, I think I’m going to embrace the moment.”
Orzel earned that moment by finishing second in this event a year ago in Oshawa, Ontario. It was a validation of his decision to shift his training base to the camp of Ravi Walia in Edmonton, and it allowed Orzel to achieve his goal of landing on the podium in the senior men’s event at Canadians.
And like all the top contenders here, he knows there’s an even bigger opportunity at the top with Messing having hung up his skates.
“Now that Keegan’s gone, there has to be someone new. Definitely, that’s my goal, to capitalize on that opportunity,” said Orzel, who expects a fierce battle for the title. “Coming second last year definitely changed my life … It helped put me on the map. Even this season, coming into this competition, I will be skating last in the short program. It kind of sets the tone that this is a guy that has a good chance of medalling or even winning.”
Canada has two men’s spots to fill at the World Championships, and Orzel, Sadovsky, Wesley Chiu and Stephen Gogolev appear to be the prime contenders to secure those prized tickets to Montreal.
“There’s two spots this season, and I definitely want to capture one of them,” said Orzel. “It’s going to be fun to see who’s going to make it.”
A different kind of dance
It was just a year ago that Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier missed the Canadian championships because of a health issue, and Nikolaj Soerensen and Laurence Fournier Beaudry duelled with Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha for the Canadian title — and event that was decided in the former’s favour by less than a point.
What a difference a year makes. As we mentioned yesterday, the top two finishers in 2-2023 have withdrawn for separate reasons, meaning Gilles and Poirier are the lone Canadian participant in the Grand Prix Final (all three teams were there) to make it to the national championships. It isn’t exactly the competition they expected, but that won’t change their mindset when the dance begins Friday.
“I don’t think it’s really any different. Every competition we go to has a different set of competitors. We have really high goals for ourselves, how we want to skate and what we want to accomplish, what standard of excellence we want to put out every time we skate.” said Poirier. “And that goal really doesn’t change, no matter the competition, no matter the field or whether it’s the first competition of the season or the last one. We always skate the best program we can do at that point in the season.
“So I don’t really think it’s changed our mindset at all. We really are coming here focusing on the work that we want to do. We’ve had lots of positive changes that we’ve made since the Grand Prix Final. They’re only just starting to jell now but for us, the focus will be on Four Continents and the World Championships, and we’re sort of using this as a testing ground for those changes.”
Added Gilles: “Here we are again. This is probably our first real feeling nationals in the last four years. We’re really thrilled to be here. It’s just the idea that there’s going to be people and the sense of what we’re used to at this competition. It’s just another opportunity to play with those changes, up our energy, up our technical score, up our execution and use it as a stepping stone for World Championships in March.”
No place like home
No skater at Canadians this week figures to be more familiar with WinSport Arena than Kaiya Ruiter. It’s a place she’s become keenly familiar with since it became her daily training home a number of years ago.
“Some people say I should have a tent here,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve been training here for several years, especially since pandemic. I pretty much live here. I went to school here, I train here and I skate here.”
She also competed here back in March, when the world junior championships were held at WinSport. Now the 17-year-old Ruiter, who placed 10th at junior worlds, gets to do it all over again at the Canadian championships.
“It’s beyond special. I’m so grateful to have another opportunity to compete in this rink. I love this place so much,” she said. “It’s really been my second home since moving out west. I can’t wait to compete out here again.”
She’ll also see — and hear — plenty of familiar voices this week.
“My two little sisters have been volunteering all week; they’ve been ice patching. My dad’s been announcing as well … he has a great voice for it,” she said. “My mom’s here, my older sister is here, my grandma is here. Just having all that love and support makes it that much more fun.”
The women’s short program kicks off Friday’s competition at 10:40 a.m.
In sync with the rest
This marks the second year that Skate Canada has integrated synchronized skating into its national championships. And it’s been a huge hit. The skaters themselves love the opportunity to be included on Canadian skating’s biggest stage, and they bring a distinct energy of their own to the competition (if you’ve ever been to a synchro event, you know it’s very loud and very fun).
It’s a plan that SC hatched two years ago to bring all of its competitive disciplines into the same big event, and make it more inclusive.
“Skate Canada updated its long-term development in sport and physical literacy framework in 2021-2022,” said Shae Zukiwsky, SC’s senior director of performance excellence, in explaining the strategic move. “Synchro was fully integrated into this LTD revision. Our podium pathway is now consistent for all disciplines, including singles, pairs, ice dance and synchro.”
And the fact of the matter is, Canadians have proven to be among the world’s best in synchro. Quebec’s Les Supremes won the last two ISU world titles, and perennial power NEXXICE, of Burlington, Ontario, took the global crown in 2015 (Finland and Sweden are the other traditional powers in the sport).
The first medals of this year’s nationals were handed out Thursday night in the junior category, and there were some familiar names at the top. Les Supremes reigned supreme, winning both the short and free programs to post a winning overall score of 197.55. That was more than eight points better than NEXXICE (189.07), with Quebec’s Nova (183.28) in third.
Senior medals will be decided on Friday night.