Elvis Stojko remembers watching Brian Orser spin through the air with a triple axel on his TV screen, inspiring him to one day follow the path carved out by the Canadian figure skating legend.
“It was a really amazing time for us,” Stojko said. “We had so many great idols and great heroes to look up to.”
Orser stacked hardware with two Olympic silver medals, a world championship and eight straight national titles in the 1980s. Next came Kurt Browning, who strutted his way to four world championships.
Stojko carried on the mantle of Canadian success, winning seven national championships, three world titles and two Olympic silver medals in the 1990s.
“I was very, very lucky in the '90s to have that chance to skate during the — I guess they were considering it a golden era of skating,” Stojko said.
But Canada’s men no longer rule the ice, or top the podium.
No Canadian has won a men’s world or Olympic medal since Patrick Chan claimed silver at the 2014 Games, and that drought isn’t expected to end any time soon.
Rather than a roster of contenders, Canada is sending only one men’s participant to next year’s worlds after national champion Wesley Chiu and Roman Sadovsky finished 17th and 19th last March in Montreal.
At Skate Canada International last weekend in Halifax, top Canadian Aleksa Rakic showed promise but still finished seventh in the 12-skater Grand Prix event that featured only a sample of the world contenders.
"I just hope they can figure out a way to bring it back, but it will be a tough climb,” Stojko said.
Stojko believes one major problem is that young athletes can’t find figure skating on TV and be inspired like he was to take up the sport.
"It's not as accessible … You have to kind of search for it,” he said. "I watched the Battle of the Brians in 1988 (when Orser and American Brian Boitano duked it out for Olympic gold) — that was a massive thing.”
Chan is yet another Canadian skater who reached the top of the skate world, winning three world championships from 2011 to 2013 with his combination of artistry and athleticism. He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame last week.
The 33-year-old says the sport has changed drastically since he retired in 2018 because of a new generation pushing the boundaries “at a rate that I've never seen before.”
“The bar has been raised by the likes of Ilia Malinin so high that it's almost like anything below him is noise,” Chan said. “Elvis Stojko, Kurt and Alexei Yagudin — these are like my idols — even they would be like middle of the pack in this current era.
“If I was starting as a junior skater right now and I was watching the field ahead of me, I'd be like, ‘maybe I should start looking at a different sport,’ because it's just so crazy.”
Malinin is the only man to have landed a quad axel in competition. The 19-year-old American landed six quads in a record-breaking free skate at worlds, and dominated the field this past weekend at Skate Canada.
As for how young Canadian skaters can get into the race, Chan doesn’t have the answers and expects it could take another five or 10 years before that changes.
He says building from the grassroots, bringing back alumni for guidance and having a consistent national champion who builds momentum are all things that help.
But he also wonders if Canada should quit trying to chase Malinin’s unreachable heights, and instead try to win at a different game.
"It’s like X-Games-style, fireworks, but it's starting to all look the same," he said. “We've lost touch a bit with the art of skating.
“My tip to Wesley (Chiu) is spend more time working with a modern dance teacher, a ballet teacher … I took improv class at one point. I worked with a mime — going above and beyond doing weights in the gym or quad after quad on the ice."
Sadovsky, a veteran of the Canadian team at only 25, isn’t sure what needs to happen for Canada to get back on top either.
“If I had an easy answer that one, I think we would be winning all the competitions," he said.
“It's kind of an aspect with the high risk, high reward factor of quads in men's figure skating, and I think we're trying to play that game,” he added. “I still think we have very strong skaters."
Canadian coach Lee Barkell recalls that Canada went 10 years without winning a men's world title between Stojko in 1997 and Jeffrey Buttle in 2008 (although both won silver in that stretch).
“When the champion steps down, everybody panics and it does take a few years to rebuild,” he said. “Those talented skaters coming up, they’ve got to continue to push each other … Eventually somebody is going to rise to the top.”
Skate Canada high-performance director Mike Slipchuk seconds that opinion and remains optimistic about the future of men’s skating.
“It's a young team, and we just feel they just need that time,” he said. “With a year and a half out of Olympics, we're just going to utilize that to get them as many opportunities, to get out internationally … to be competitive with the top guys."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2024.
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press