In a previous Vancouver 2010 Olympics preview post, I wrote about Canada’s best medal hope in men’s figure skating. Today the focus is on our medal contender in female figure skating.
Joannie Rochette:
Joannie Rochette is a relative late bloomer in terms of how long it
took her to contend for world titles, but at the age of 23, she is pushing her name into the list of the world’s elite skaters. Her past results have been nothing to scoff at, with the most impressive being a 5th place finish at the 2006 Turin Olympics and a 5th at the 2008 World Championships in Sweden, but with the Olympics coming up in her home country, lately she has been setting her sights even higher.
To set the tone for her 2009 season, she dominated the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in January, winning by a margin of 25 and capturing her fifth consecutive title as the country’s champion. Using that as a springboard into world competition, she won a silver medal at the Four Continents Championship in February, losing to Korea’s Kim Yu-Na. Indeed, Kim may be Rochette’s toughest competition on the world scene, as she showed again in March at the World Figure Skating Championships where Rochette achieved the best result of her career, winning a silver medal, and once again finishing second to the Korean.
With the next major world competition being the Olympics, Rochette aims to add a few elements to her routines to increase the her potential maximum score, the toughest being a triple-triple combination in her short program. If she manages to pull these jumps off by the time the Olympics come around, she may very well be standing atop the podium in Vancouver come February.
Joannie Rochette is a relative late bloomer in terms of how long it
took her to contend for world titles, but at the age of 23, she is pushing her name into the list of the world’s elite skaters. Her past results have been nothing to scoff at, with the most impressive being a 5th place finish at the 2006 Turin Olympics and a 5th at the 2008 World Championships in Sweden, but with the Olympics coming up in her home country, lately she has been setting her sights even higher.To set the tone for her 2009 season, she dominated the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in January, winning by a margin of 25 and capturing her fifth consecutive title as the country’s champion. Using that as a springboard into world competition, she won a silver medal at the Four Continents Championship in February, losing to Korea’s Kim Yu-Na. Indeed, Kim may be Rochette’s toughest competition on the world scene, as she showed again in March at the World Figure Skating Championships where Rochette achieved the best result of her career, winning a silver medal, and once again finishing second to the Korean.
With the next major world competition being the Olympics, Rochette aims to add a few elements to her routines to increase the her potential maximum score, the toughest being a triple-triple combination in her short program. If she manages to pull these jumps off by the time the Olympics come around, she may very well be standing atop the podium in Vancouver come February.
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