Patrick Chan prioritizes Olympic team event in last shot at gold

By Nick ZaccardiJan 10, 2018, 4:57 PM EST

Getty Images

Patrick Chan was the world’s best figure skater for three straight years.

Now 27 (that’s aging in skating), he’s leaning on help from other Canadians in a last bid for the Olympic gold medal that has eluded him.

Chan, who goes for his 10th national title this week, extols the Olympic team event that debuted in Sochi and returns for PyeongChang.

Canada took silver four years ago and appears closer to champion Russian this time around.

“It’s the event that I’m looking forward to the most, actually,” Chan said last week. “Our [Canada’s] approach to the team event is very different from Sochi. I think we’re taking the team event this time around a lot more seriously. It’s less of an experimental situation. It’s much more of a planned and thought-through opportunity for all of us to get a medal, to get a gold medal. It’s the best chance we ever have.”

In 2010, Chan went into the Olympics as the reigning world silver medalist looking to become the first teenage male singles champion since 1948.

He finished fifth in Vancouver, where he now trains and will compete to earn one of two Canadian Olympic men’s berths this weekend.

Chan then won three straight world titles from 2011 through 2013 but took silver at the Sochi Olympics behind Japanese teen Yuzuru Hanyu.

“My last two Olympics, I got off the ice disappointed,” Chan said, according to NBC Olympic Research, “because my expectations were based on things I can’t control. Like, ‘I’ve got to win the gold medal in Canada, or I’m the reigning [world] champion going into Sochi, so I must win.’”

Chan took a one-year break, then returned, but has not kept up with the quadruple-jump revolution of the last two to three years.

He was fifth at each of the last two world championships and ranks 21st in the world this season.

His chances of individual Olympic gold are remote, but Canada in this Olympic cycle has developed into arguably the world’s best all-around skating nation.

Chan was a leader, along with ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, in the 2014 Olympic team event.

Now he may be its biggest question mark.

Pairs skaters Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford won the 2015 and 2016 World titles. Kaetlyn Osmond is the world silver medalist. And Virtue and Moir came back from a two-year break to claim last season’s world title.

Would a team gold mean just as much to Chan as the individual one that he missed?

“Absolutely, because a medal is a medal,” he said. “At this point in my career, anything at this point is a bonus. For me, going to the Olympics for a third time, that in itself is an achievement.”

Nobody is on the Olympic team yet, but it would be shocking if Chan doesn’t make it. His best score last season was more than 40 points higher than the next-best Canadian.

For Canada to win gold in the team event, Chan’s mini competition with Russia in the men’s portion may be pivotal. Finishing ahead of or behind Russia in either the short program of free skate means a multiple-point swing between the two favored nations.

Chan beat both Russians at last season’s worlds, but Russian men improved as a whole this season with three ranking ahead of Chan.

However, Chan only competed at one Grand Prix event this fall (and struggled), while most skaters had two or three events to post a top score for world ranking purposes.

Chan was fourth at Skate Canada in October, falling and making errors on most of his jumping passes in a seventh-place free skate.

In announcing his withdrawal before his November Grand Prix, Chan said he “never had a skate like that in a big event.”

He also changed training bases, moving back to Canada for the first time in seven years. Chan said last week that his environment in Michigan was “taking a toll” on his mental well-being before withdrawing from that second Grand Prix.

“Being back in Canada and not feeling like such a stranger as I go about my life every day,” he said.

Chan plans one quadruple jump in Friday’s short program and two in Saturday’s free skate, all quad toes. He has dropped the quad Salchow he had in addition to the toe last season.

“I took a bit of a more strategic approach, looking at what I’m capable of doing and where my strengths are,” he said. “I shouldn’t feel diminished at all. I think I can offer a lot in so many other ways than just quads.”

In 2010, Evan Lysacek won the Olympics without any quads. Next month, the Olympic champion will likely have two quads in his short program and at least four in his free skate.

“I’ve kind of lived the bridge between these two generations of skaters,” Chan said. “I hope I can just be one of those skaters who’s a bit of a Switzerland, right in the middle, and can show the benefits of a very technically sound skater and also a very artistically sound skater. I think that’s where my strengths lie. I know that nobody can do that. I’m the only skater that can offer that. I may be the last.”

Chan said in August 2016 that he would retire after the 2018 Olympic season. Chan said last week he hasn’t thought beyond PyeongChang, if he may compete one more time at the world championships in March.

“The result at the Olympics isn’t going to change people’s memory of me,” Chan said, according to NBC Olympic Research, “or the mark I’ve left on the sport.”

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

MORE: Medal outlook for U.S. Olympic figure skating team

Follow @nzaccardi

Football takes significant step in Olympic push

By OlympicTalkMar 29, 2023, 2:18 PM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Football took another step toward possible Olympic inclusion with the IOC executive board proposing that the sport’s international federation — the IFAF — be granted full IOC recognition at a meeting in October.

IOC recognition does not equate to eventual Olympic inclusion, but it is a necessary early marker if a sport is to join the Olympics down the line. The IOC gave the IFAF provisional recognition in 2013.

Specific measures are required for IOC recognition, including having an anti-doping policy compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency and having 50 affiliated national federations from at least three continents. The IFAF has 74 national federations over five continents with almost 4.8 million registered athletes, according to the IOC.

The NFL has helped lead the push for flag football to be added for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Flag football had medal events for men and women at last year’s World Games, a multi-sport competition including Olympic and non-Olympic sports, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Football is one of nine sports that have been reported to be in the running to be proposed by LA 2028 to the IOC to be added for the 2028 Games only. LA 2028 has not announced which, if any sports, it plans to propose.

Under rules instituted before the Tokyo Games, Olympic hosts have successfully proposed to the IOC adding sports solely for their edition of the Games.

For Tokyo, baseball-softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were added. For Paris, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were approved again, and breaking will make its Olympic debut. Those sports were added four years out from the Games.

For 2028, the other sports reportedly in the running for proposal are baseball and softball, breaking, cricket, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, motorsports and squash.

All of the other eight sports reportedly in the running for 2028 proposal already have a federation with full IOC recognition (if one counts the international motorcycle racing federation for motorsports).

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nbcolympictalk

Helen Maroulis stars in wrestling documentary, with help from Chris Pratt

By Nick ZaccardiMar 29, 2023, 10:05 AM EDT

Getty

One of the remarkable recent Olympic comeback stories is the subject of a film that will be shown nationwide in theaters for one day only on Thursday.

“Helen | Believe” is a documentary about Helen Maroulis, the first U.S. Olympic women’s wrestling champion. It is produced by Religion of Sports, the venture founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady. Showing details are here.

After taking gold at the 2016 Rio Games, Maroulis briefly retired in 2019 during a two-year stretch in which she dealt with concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder. The film focuses on that period and her successful bid to return and qualify for the Tokyo Games, where she took bronze.

In a poignant moment in the film, Maroulis described her “rock bottom” — being hospitalized for suicidal ideations.

In an interview, Maroulis said she was first approached about the project in 2018, the same year she had her first life-changing concussion that January. A wrestling partner’s mother was connected to director Dylan Mulick.

Maroulis agreed to the film in part to help spread mental health awareness in sports. Later, she cried while watching the 2020 HBO film, “The Weight of Gold,” on the mental health challenges that other Olympians faced, because it resonated with her so much.

“When you’re going through something, it sometimes gives you an anchor of hope to know that someone’s been through it before, and they’ve overcome it,” she said.

Maroulis’ comeback story hit a crossroads at the Olympic trials in April 2021, where the winner of a best-of-three finals series in each weight class made Team USA.

Maroulis won the opening match against Jenna Burkert, but then lost the second match. Statistically, a wrestler who loses the second match in a best-of-three series usually loses the third. But Maroulis pinned Burkert just 22 seconds into the rubber match to clinch the Olympic spot.

Shen then revealed that she tore an MCL two weeks earlier.

“They told me I would have to be in a brace for six weeks,” she said then. “I said, ‘I don’t have that. I have two and a half.’”

Maroulis said she later asked the director what would have happened if she didn’t make the team for Tokyo. She was told the film still have been done.

“He had mentioned this isn’t about a sports story or sports comeback story,” Maroulis said. “This is about a human story. And we’re using wrestling as the vehicle to tell this story of overcoming and healing and rediscovering oneself.”

Maroulis said she was told that, during filming, the project was pitched to the production company of actor Chris Pratt, who wrestled in high school in Washington. Pratt signed on as a producer.

“Wrestling has made an impact on his life, and so he wants to support these kinds of stories,” said Maroulis, who appeared at last month’s Santa Barbara Film Festival with Pratt.

Pratt said he knew about Maroulis before learning about the film, which he said “needed a little help to get it over the finish line,” according to a public relations company promoting the film.

The film also highlights the rest of the six-woman U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Tokyo. Four of the six won a medal, including Tamyra Mensah-Stock‘s gold.

“I was excited to be part of, not just (Maroulis’) incredible story, but also helping to further advance wrestling and, in particular, female wrestling,” Pratt said, according to responses provided by the PR company from submitted questions. “To me, the most compelling part of Helen’s story is the example of what life looks like after a person wins a gold medal. The inevitable comedown, the trauma around her injuries, the PTSD, the drive to continue that is what makes her who she is.”

Maroulis, who now trains in Arizona, hopes to qualify for this year’s world championships and next year’s Olympics.

“I try to treat every Games as my last,” she said. “Now I’m leaning toward being done [after 2024], but never say never.”

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Follow @nzaccardi

More: Olympics

More: Olympics