It's not good news particularly for live coverage. Broadcast CCTV5 (China Central Television Sports Channel) does not necessarily broadcast live, is apt to show only events with Chinese skaters, and also abruptly ends coverage even while the competition is ongoing. It is possible to access some of those choppy streams you talk about, but given that the bandwidth connecting China to non-China is not sufficient to smoothly get live streaming video, you're going to have to put up with the chop. Note that for streams that are geoblocked by the broadcasting country, you'll need to get a VPN (virtual private network) with servers in optimum locations....such as a Canada-based server for CBC access. This won't get rid of the chop and may make this aspect worse, or may improve it. You might have some luck since it's in Canada, and live events held in afternoons and very early evening (at the event site) will be in the early morning hours in Beijing, which means less internet traffic and therefore somewhat less chop. (Note: my experience with CBC is that is is geoblocked for China and maybe everything outside Canada, but I can access it with my VPN server set to Canada).
For all sorts of reasons besides watching figure skating, I strongly suggest that you research and find yourself a VPN with multiple possible server settings, to get around the Great Firewall that wil block your access to things such as youtube, and also to avoid being geoblocked out of North American sites that are increasingly doing this when they sense a Chinese ISP (anti-hacking measures). Try to find a VPN that you can get a 3-month or 6-month subscription to, and make it a good but non-famous service that is used to dealing with China. The free services are all crap and prone to getting shut off or blocked themselves. You cannot trust your school's VPN, it will be heavily filtered and monitored. ISP's serving Beijing are particularly overbearing on the internet security and blocking. You need your own laptop or other device, and your own private VPN. Laptop or anything you can use a wired Ethernet connection will probably be better than a wifi or 3G connection. Get any VPN, Skype, and other critical programs up and working on your device, before you head to China.
