Skate Canada

Like they have the seeding system in order to kind of spread out the competitiveness across the Grand Prix.

And yet I feel like the singles events are like the inverse of what they were at Skate Canada.

Like the men's event here is so much deeper and the women's event much less deep.

I mean, the thing that is definitely the case is that because the Russian AIN athletes didn't have spots to begin with, they had to wait until withdrawals happened in order to get their spots after they passed.

I mean, we know this from four years ago when, you know, the 2022 Olympics, the Paris field was pretty good.

And then the fall of 2022 came and we were like, wait, what's going on with pairs? And, you know, we had, we had, we literally had teams doing throw doubles who were in the top 10 of the, of Worlds.

And that included Pereira Michaud, who just won Skate Canada last week.

But like, you know, that was their first season together and they got sixth at Worlds.

event go?

Yeah, Danielle and I had a meetup and we did a little bit of just like an interview between me and her and talked about her career and talked about Skate Canada and then, you know, all that stuff.

It was like 30 people.

It was fun.

know.

Yeah.

Skate Canada fans, attendees, have done a great job the past two years, at least with the Halloween costumes.

Oh, my God.

across multiple sports.

Her expertise has also been recognised at the provincial and national level, including being named Alberta Figure Skating Coach of the Year and contributing to the development of Skate Canada's Can Power Skate programme.

In recognition of her dedication and contribution to sport, she was inducted into the Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame in 2018.

So today we are going to get into her journey.

But then in 1987, I went and became certified to teach power skating, which is biomechanics to hockey players.

and also ringette players, which is another on ice sport.

I was fortunate to, I guess, be asked by Skate Canada to become a course conductor.

And that allowed me to travel in the Western provinces and up to Nunavut to certify coaches to become power skating coaches.

But, but again, what, one of the other times in my life, God spoke to me.

It's actually, it was a fourth year university and we had to do an internship and I had a list of all of the sports franchises, um, In Canada, Olympic associations, you know, Dive Canada and Skate Canada, Hockey Canada.

And we're supposed to choose where we want to compete to get an internship.

And God spoke to me and said, Tim, this isn't what I have for you.

Besides land triple axles? What did she do? Yeah,

she came back and won that Skate Canada.

That kind of kicked off one of her major comebacks.

Yeah,

Alexa Gasparato.

Be great to see her in Everett.

And then Ida Karhunen out of Skate Canada next week.

There were all kinds of assignments, switcheroos, all kinds of stuff that happened.

And that's it for today.

If you are coming to Skate Canada next week, I will be there, and I will be doing a live show at 9 a.m. on Friday morning before practices, so bright and early.

But bright and early, come have breakfast with me.

We'll have coffee pastries.

France used to do that too.

Yeah, Skate Canada used to do that as well.

I'm so glad they split it.

You know what France used to do is they used to have when we had the compulsory dance, they would have five events on the first day and they'd have the compulsory dance first and the original dance last.