It was hard, indeed, for Alaine Chartrand to watch the world championships in Helsinki last March – and she wasn’t there. She wanted to be there.
Still, it gave her a head start on this season and she set to work. When she heard that Canadians Kaetlyn Osmond had finished second, and Gabby Daleman, third in Helsinki, thereby earning Canadian women three spots at the upcoming Olympic Games, Chartrand happened to be on the ice, doing choreography for her short program for this season with Shae-Lynn Bourne.
When Chartrand got off the ice, she checked the women’s results on her cell phone. And she started to cry.
So this season is one of hope. Those three spots? Snaring them took the pressure off Chartrand, who would have had to try to defeat one of the other two Canadian women at the national championships in January to get an Olympic spot. “Now I can really focus on me,” she said. “I always try to do that, but having that extra spot is amazing.”
This season has been one of rebirth for Chartrand. There is little doubt that Chartrand has all the tools to make a mark on the world stage. There have been signs of brilliance in the past. Her jumps are HUGE. She’s one of the fastest female singles skaters in the world. Her programs are done by the best choreographers. They are beautiful things. But this season, she’s working on the rest of the package. Including herself. There have been many changes. Many new approaches.
For one, she spent the summer consistently in one spot, in Oakville, Ont., where prime coach Michelle Leigh hangs her hat. In other words, she wasn’t travelling about in the family RV from rink to rink to rink. She bunked up in Oakville with a skating family.
“Some things are a lot easier to manage,” she said. “Like being close to the rink. After skating, I can make sure I have time in the evening to have proper recovery.”
Other things are not so easy. Her mother always did a lot for her at home. Now Chartrand has had to learn how to cook and work the washing machine. And the small-town girl (Prescott, Ont., population 4,284 and maybe less when Chartrand is not in town) had to learn how to navigate driving in Toronto. “It’s been an experience,” she said. “All of those things have been new for me, and fun to get used to.”
Other changes? She’s now making regular trips to Colorado Springs to work on her jump technique with Christy Krall, she of the video/Dartfish fame. Chartrand investigated a few other locations, but decided Colorado Springs was the place to be. And along the way, she’s drafted Olympic dance champion Christopher Dean onto her team of advisors as well.
Chartrand paid another visit to Krall after her less-than-happy performance at the Autumn Classic International in Montreal a month ago, when she underrotated five jumps, some less drastically than others, in the free skate. She ended up fifth overall. She hoped for better. Last year at Autumn Classic, she had won the long program, to take the silver medal overall behind Mirai Nagasu.
The thing is, Chartrand was suffering from a head cold that surfaced the night before the long program this time, even after a stellar practice the previous day. She had a headache, and a fever, and she couldn’t breathe through her nose.
So off to Krall she went. Krall has been helping her to get her jumps organized better, to get into the rotation more quickly, to ensure the left arm is in control, and the exit is quick.
“It’s frustrating, because I jump huge,” Chartrand said. “I’ve been told I have big jumps.”
Krall set the timer to record how long she was in the air between the launch of the jump and the landing. And then looked at the Canadian skater and said: “You should be able to do a quad with this.”
So Chartrand is in search of ways to become more efficient in her jumps so that she can land them cleanly. “There is no way that I should be underrotating with the height I get,” she said.
Krall has lots of little toys and tricks to make this happen. She ties a little squeaker to Chartrand’s ankles. When Chartrand hears it squeak while she is in the air on a jump, she knows she has pulled her feet together. And the sooner she hears the squeak, the better.
The wonderful thing about training with Krall is that she is on the same page as Leigh. They both subscribe to the same coaching ideas. Chartrand also gets to train sometimes with Nathan Chen. The Colorado Springs arena is a busy one, so Chartrand has to go with its flow, in a competitive environment with other top skaters. And she gets to train at altitude. At home in Oakville, Chartrand is the No. 1 skater and gets to skate to her music as much as she likes. The mix is all good.
And Dean, who retired from skating after winning the Olympic title with Jayne Torvill in 1984 and then returned with the reinstatement of pros in 1994, has also played a role this time in Chartrand’s routines. The last time she was in Colorado Springs, she asked him to help. Krall encouraged it.
Chartrand, who was born two years after Dean’s last appearance on the competitive scene, knows all about the blond Briton. “When you think of the beginning of ice dance, he’s it,” she said. “He’s like a king in my eyes and in the skating world. It’s such an opportunity to work with him.”
Dean looked at both of her programs and they spent a couple of hours together on ice, working on facial expressions, bringing out the background story in specific parts of the program, and telling her how to use her eyes and where to look and how to look during a program.
“I have a tendency to look down,” Chartrand said. He told her how to use motions with her eyes.
“I think he has so much to give, so anything that he could possible give, I’m going to take and use it,” she said. “So there is a little piece of Christopher Dean in there. And I think that’s pretty cool.”
With the help of all these changes, Chartrand has her eyes set on one goal: to make it to the Olympics. “The Olympics is something I’ve been dreaming about forever,” she said. She missed out on the Sochi Games four years ago. She’ll do what it takes to get to Pyeongchang.
Beverley Smith 