Saturday, December 15, 2001
Canuck duo sitting pretty
By STEVE BUFFERY -- Sun Media
KITCHENER, Ont. -- Tomorrow night or Monday morning, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier will be facing a crucial decision as they leave Kitchener for Pearson International Airport.
Tim Hortons or Coffee Time?
Actually, the decision will be whether to perform the Love Story or the new Adagio Sostenuto Piano Concerto No.2 long program at the Salt Lake City Olympics.
"It's a great problem to have, to have two good programs like this," said Pelletier yesterday, after he and his partner finished first in the short program at the ISU Grand Prix final at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium.
"We're so happy and excited that we have two great programs to choose from," Sale, 24, said. "So it's going to be interesting."
Ain't that the truth. The reigning world pairs champions performed the Adagio number last night and will lay Love Story on the audience tonight as the Grand Prix final wraps up.
And while nothing is carved in stone, the dynamic duo hinted strongly yesterday that whichever program gives them the best feel from this weekend's competition may very well be the program they take to Utah in their bid to become only the second Canadian pairs team to win the Olympic gold. Bob Paul and Barbara Wagner, based out of Toronto, captured the top prize in pairs at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games.
Whether they win gold or not in Salt Lake will come down to how they skate, obviously. But if they skate well, there seems to be a feeling that it won't matter whether they use Love Story or Adagio as the vehicle. Both have the potential to deliver the team right to the top, even if the two programs are poles apart in terms of style. It's like when Monty Hall asks if you want what's in the box or what's behind door No. 3 (behind the lovely Linda).
"Love Story is telling a story and there're three parts to it and it's so easy to use that music to tell each part of the story," said Sale, who joined up with her partner in the summer of 1998. "With (Adagio), you just become an abstract object, like a flower. And I always have to think I'm the flower opening and Dave is the power of the stem underneath, and we're trying to show that throughout the program. The effortlessness and weightlessness, all of that.
"It's totally different, but it's fine, it's relaxing."
Interestingly, the couple captured the world title last year with a totally different long program, one based on the Richard Wagner opera Tristan & Isolde. With Adagio, they won the Skate America and Skate Canada Grand Prix events this season thanks, in part, to some very consistent skating and the excellent work of choreographer Lori Nichol.
With Love Story, performed in 1999, Sale and Pelletier established themselves as a team that can genuinely move an audience, to tell a story with real emotion. So, when all is said and done, it will be a very interesting choice.
Of course, all bets are off in Salt Lake if Sale and Pelletier don't skate up to snuff and the second two teams, the Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, and the Chinese Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, second and third at last year's worlds, do skate to potential.
2002 Games Figure Skating Coverage
