Can Patrick Chan cope with the pressure of Olympic favouritism? | Page 4 | Golden Skate

Can Patrick Chan cope with the pressure of Olympic favouritism?

CanadianSkaterGuy

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 25, 2013
Delusional and ignorant. He can barely afford training despite being multiple world champions. Nobody outside the skating circule knows who Patrick is precisely because the constant overscoring/chaninflation.

Actually in Canada he is quite well known. Similar to how Takahashi and Asada is a household name in Japan but outside of the skating circle and the skater's home country, few people know who he is. That's a problem with the sport not the skaters. Not everyone can be a Michelle Kwan.
 

Moment

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 18, 2013
Mao is one of the biggest female stars in Japan and also is extremely well known in Korea as well. I doubt Patrick in Canada is anywhere close to her status.
 

Bluebonnet

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
I don't think. My commentator always said, Kozuka has similar great SS, like Chan. She was an ISU judge.

Well, the results from all the competitions clearly showed that that was not the case. Were all the judges from all different competitions, which have been formed by different people as judge, wrong or was your commentator wrong?
 

Scout

Final Flight
Joined
Sep 5, 2009
I don't think. My commentator always said, Kozuka has similar great SS, like Chan. She was an ISU judge.

I always take the comments from commentators with a grain of salt. The US ones seems biased towards the US. The Canadian ones seem bias towards Canadians skaters. The Eurosport ones seem to be the least biased, the most friendly, but also the least knowledgable.

I remember during the last World Cup (soccer), the US channels and commentators were talking up the US team, saying that they had a good chance to advance - ask any soccer fan and they would have told you otherwise. The commentators were just trying to build some interest for the team, get the US citizens interested, and hopefully get more viewers.

Judging for skating is obsure enough that a casual fan has no idea if Kozuka's SS are similar or not to Chan's. Ask different commentators and you'll likely get different responses.
 

Ice Diva

On the Ice
Joined
Sep 10, 2012
Also, Boitano did two triple Axels, IIRC.

I have confidence in Chan. The other guys are under pressure, too. Chan has his strong basic skating skills to fall back on, even if he makes a mistake.

IA. Chan can definitely win if he calms his nerves & gets into his zone -- easy to say of course. But the field is deep & anything can happen.
 

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
What Olympic favoritism for Patrick? The Olympics will be held in Russia, so favoritism may go their way...just saying.
 

plushyfan

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Country
Hungary
I always take the comments from commentators with a grain of salt. The US ones seems biased towards the US. The Canadian ones seem bias towards Canadians skaters. The Eurosport ones seem to be the least biased, the most friendly, but also the least knowledgable.

And maybe you are biased toward your commentators. ;)
 

drivingmissdaisy

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
I always take the comments from commentators with a grain of salt. The US ones seems biased towards the US. The Canadian ones seem bias towards Canadians skaters. The Eurosport ones seem to be the least biased, the most friendly, but also the least knowledgable.

I can't agree with the last part. At least the Eurosport guys try to factor in URs, take-off edges and spins when trying to predict who will win. Scott and Sandra count falls to make the same assessment.
 

pangtongfan

Match Penalty
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
What Olympic favoritism for Patrick? The Olympics will be held in Russia, so favoritism may go their way...just saying.

The OP likely means he is the odds on/bookies favorite for gold in Sochi, which he obviously is at this point. As for who people sentimentally are rooting for, well outside of Canada that is never Chan to begin with. In Sochi it will be a Russian if they can even field someone decent enough worth rooting for.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 25, 2013
The OP likely means he is the odds on/bookies favorite for gold in Sochi, which he obviously is at this point. As for who people sentimentally are rooting for, well outside of Canada that is never Chan to begin with. In Sochi it will be a Russian if they can even field someone decent enough worth rooting for.

Hah he isn't the sentimental favourite because he is the *favourite*. Just like S/S were the favourites in Vancouver but S/Z were the sentimental favourites. Your haterade is yet again fuelling your delusion if you think that only people in Canada want to see Chan win. He has fans internationally who are rooting for him.

p.s. Hope you didn't cry too much or pull your hair out too hard when Chan won yet again (and by a landslide, at that). ;)
 

spikydurian

Medalist
Joined
Jan 15, 2012
Hah he isn't the sentimental favourite because he is the *favourite*. Just like S/S were the favourites in Vancouver but S/Z were the sentimental favourites. Your haterade is yet again fuelling your delusion if you think that only people in Canada want to see Chan win. He has fans internationally who are rooting for him.

p.s. Hope you didn't cry too much or pull your hair out too hard when Chan won yet again (and by a landslide, at that). ;)
I don't think there's any hair left to pull.:biggrin:
 

Buttercup

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Hah he isn't the sentimental favourite because he is the *favourite*. Just like S/S were the favourites in Vancouver but S/Z were the sentimental favourites.
Actually, S/Z were the favorites going into Vancouver, having had a very strong GP campaign while S/S struggled all season. A pity as to the latter, because they had lovely programs while S/Z were not skating to their best material.

p.s. Hope you didn't cry too much or pull your hair out too hard when Chan won yet again (and by a landslide, at that). ;)
Any event in which a skater wins by a landslide is by definition one in which most of the skaters gave subpar performances. As such, it is disappointing regardless of who the winner is. Of course, that disappointment can be countered if one happens to like the winner (I'm sure Plushenko fans shed no tears about the meh men's event in Torino 2006, for instance). But for fans in general, while hair pulling is not indicated, it is not what one hopes for.

Did you know that GS's fanfest section pretty much started because it was impossible to have any reasonable discussion about Patrick Chan in the general threads, thus necessitating fan-specific ones? For some reason he brings out the worst in people on both sides of the debate. My approach these days is supreme indifference, BTW. I'd rather watch the ladies than the men.
 

emdee

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Well, the results from all the competitions clearly showed that that was not the case. Were all the judges from all different competitions, which have been formed by different people as judge, wrong or was your commentator wrong?

While kozuka is very light on his feet and the way his blade touches the ice is an art form he doesn't have Patrick's very deep edges or his wonderful upper body movements.
 

emdee

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Hah he isn't the sentimental favourite because he is the *favourite*. Just like S/S were the favourites in Vancouver but S/Z were the sentimental favourites. Your haterade is yet again fuelling your delusion if you think that only people in Canada want to see Chan win. He has fans internationally who are rooting for him.

p.s. Hope you didn't cry too much or pull your hair out too hard when Chan won yet again (and by a landslide, at that). ;)
You mean he didn't fall 6 times.....oh dear someone finds herself wrong!
 

rvi5

On the Ice
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
...Your haterade is yet again fuelling your delusion if you think that only people in Canada want to see Chan win. He has fans internationally who are rooting for him.
During the Worlds competition in Russia, I remember a closeup of a group of Russian fans standing and cheering after Patrick's winning skate. It was funny, because a few seats over was a woman who was giving these fans a looong disgusted stare. :laugh:
 

emdee

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
I remember that the great Tarasova stood up and cheered for Patrick after his long.
He is also a skaters skater and nearly all of them will show you their appreciation of his skills.

His skills with the blade are most noticeable when he is skating in a practice with other high ranked skaters.
 

phaeljones

On the Ice
Joined
Apr 18, 2012
Actually in Canada he is quite well known. Similar to how Takahashi and Asada is a household name in Japan but outside of the skating circle and the skater's home country, few people know who he is. That's a problem with the sport not the skaters. Not everyone can be a Michelle Kwan.

For whatever the reason, I don't think that people in Canada have warmed up to Patrick Chan. He has a lot of traits that don't make him easily likeable and those traits have been exploited by certain sports reporters (one reporter seems to stand out in my mind in particular) to establish a less than flattering image. Part of it is unfair press, but part of it has also been the circumstances of the last two worlds (where there were genuine issues) and part of it has to be that he just, himself, was saying things he should not have said. In the past, he has not been a help in giving the sport a foothold upon which it could become more popular. Not his fault in the grand scheme, but he sure has not been a help (and some of the criticisms against him were quite fair).

To his credit, he continued to be there through it all. To me, he has his pre-Krall period where he was golden, his Krall period where everything tensed up too tightly (even when he skated astoundingly well), and finally, now, his new period where he has set himself free and can have a focus that is all of comfortable, commanding and intense. I am talking about what seems to be his mental space as much as his skating space. I thought it was a rather ironic and beautiful statement of his power that he skated his short at Skate Canada with out a quad (totally Krall-less) and established, in my mind, for the first time fully his self as his own skater. He was at Skate Canada able to show that he was in a space that was his own and that no one else can touch him. In that space, nothing can affect his skating, not even bad interviews or stories. (Nevertheless, aside from his skating space, I wish that he would start avoiding certain reporters. He should have learned by now which ones they are.)

Regarding mental space and pressure, I am now more worrying about other skaters finding theirs, so that they can skate their best. (If everyone skates their best, we all win no matter what the result.) I think Patrick has and can find his space to deal with the pressure, as shown at Skate Canada. And as regards his reputation, the sport really is about skating for most of us, right? The other stuff we talk about, acknowledge and has some secondary importance (and often legitimately choose who we like and want to win), but we really are here first and foremost to laud great skating. But for Patrick this year, he can handle the pressure.
 
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