Chan has nothing to lose in final skate
Canadian champ needs perfect outing, luck to win medal
Last Updated: Thursday, February 18, 2010 | 4:34 AM ET
By Malcolm Kelly, CBC Sports
Canada's Patrick Chan will need a special performance to win a medal in men's figure skating Thursday night. (Mark Baker/Associated Press) For Patrick Chan, the only way forward is to wind himself up and go for it.
The young Canadian figure-skating champion has nothing to lose, now that any hope for an Olympic gold medal is gone following a faulty short program on Tuesday. The best that can likely be achieved is to reprise Jeffrey Buttle's bronze from four years back.
Thursday evening in Vancouver, there will be four bodies for the 19-year-old to climb over if he's to salvage something from his first Olympic Games.
"[Now it's about] going out and skating from the heart, not thinking about the medal, not thinking about the audience, not thinking of wanting to skate my best in Vancouver," Chan said after his Wednesday workout.
"I just want to do what I love to do. And that's why the judges are here, to watch my program. I want to show them what they've been waiting for."
Defending champ Evgeni Plushenko leads through the first skate after laying down a beautiful, preening, powerful performance and scoring 90.85 points.
In 7th position
The Russian is still, however, less than half a point up on world champion Evan Lysacek of the United States and half a point ahead of Japan's Daisuke Takahashi. Chan is seventh in this, the deepest men's field anyone can remember, and he's just over nine points back of Takahashi.
In fourth is countryman Nobunari Oda, with Swiss skater Stephane Lambiel, American Johnny Weir and Chan following up.
Of those five, Takahashi has by far the highest personal-best score in the long program (175.84), so if it's to be done by Chan (160.29), Takahashi will have to collapse.
Weir (152.75 personal best), meanwhile, is not normally in the same long-program class as the others, so he'll likely drop.
But there is nothing to choose from between Oda (163.33), Lambiel (160.93) and Chan in the second skate, so a lot of bodies will need to drop in front of him for the Canadian to pull this off.
Still, sixth is exactly where Buttle sat at Torino before battling back to the bronze by jumping over Weir, France's Brian Joubert and Takahashi.
"That's one thing I thought about [Tuesday], right when I got off the ice," Chan said. "I think that's what I have to keep in mind, that I'm not out of it."
Up at the top of the standings, Plushenko is already being hailed by some observers as a cinch, but his best long-skate total is 167.67. Lysacek's is 159.60.
Bringing us back to Takahashi, who could actually jump from third to first if both he and Plushenko hit personal highs.
Thursday night will tell. Bring a good calculator.
