What an incredibly self-aware athlete Patrick has become, and how wonderfully written by Bev Smith (yet again). Unlike DiManno, Smith writes in a respectful and hopeful way about Patrick's decisions.
I am sorry that those big elements have been giving Patrick fear lately, but I'm glad he's decided what to do about it instead of letting that fear take over every time he needs to skate. We'll see when the 4S comes back. Now with him having even more of a disadvantage in TES, we have to really not care about results. Patrick taught me how to do that, actually, when he came back. Still, I hope he gets good placements at the GPs and can make it to the GPF (I NEED to see these programs as many times as possible, and he took Nebelhorn away from me!
:dev2
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Some telling excerpts:
“I’ll admit it,” he said. “I’m not a technical genius when it comes to jumps. I’ve done what I needed to do to get to the top during my prime days. I accomplished that. For me to try to compete with the others, adding a quad flip, a quad Lutz, I don’t enjoy that.
At the end of the day, I’m skating because I’ve continued to push myself into the 2018 Games, my third Games, because I want to enjoy it."
“My strategy is to focus on the quality of the program,” Chan said.
“It’s more what I want to do and what I love to do about skating: the actual performance.” His two new programs – “Dust in the Wind” and “Hallelujah,” are meaningful to him, easily the most meaningful, soulful programs he’s ever done, he said. It’s a meaningful season to him, too, because it will be his swan song.
The thing is, Chan’s motivation this year is to enjoy the process and the Games.
He feels this new strategy will make him feel that he can accomplish the most out of every performance this year. “I want to perform with a feeling of complete control of my situation,” he said. He’s thinking about his own personal enjoyment, performing what is still a very difficult routine.
“I fell on the toe,” Chan said. “I kept myself in the right mindset to do the quad Sal and I went up and I rotated it and I fell again. Then I went up into the triple Axel and fell on the triple Axel. At that point, I kind of threw my hands up in the air.
At that point, I didn’t even want to complete the footwork sequence, which I love personally. It’s my favourite part of the program. But because of the mistakes on the jumps, I had no desire to keep going.” [When Patrick Chan says he doesn't feel like doing a step sequence, that's like Nathan Chen saying he doesn't feel like doing quads!
I'm impressed by Patrick's openness in revealing this. Looking back, I think this did happen to him in the Sochi LP.]
He still has his tour de force of a jump sequence: the triple Axel – half loop – triple Salchow, which he says offers a better balance of risk and reward. It gives him headaches, sometimes. But it can work and it’s "empowering," he said. It leads into his choreographic step sequence. It just works very well. He likes it. It will become valuable to him. [I'm THRILLED that he sounds so confident and happy about the 3A+1Lo+3S!!!!! The one at Onyx was SO BEAUTIFUL!!! More of those, please.
]
Chan intends to put that quad Salchow back in later, depending on how his body feels. But for the time being, he needs to build his confidence to be able to perform consistently.
The strategy is sound. And personal. [
this ending SO MUCH!!!]
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so i always want to see more 
:hap93:
