Cover Story

O Canada

Buttle and Rochette Carry the Country's Olympic Hopes

By Rob Brodie

Their dreams began, oddly enough, during the same cold Canadian winter. Hundreds of miles apart, they sat, snuggled in front of flickering television screens, mesmerized by what they saw.

Lillehammer in 1994. The quaint Norwegian village, far away on the other side of the ocean … that was when the spark was lit. When the inspiration for the biggest of dreams began to ferment and grow.

"I remember watching it and telling my mom and dad I'd be going to the Olympics someday," Jeffrey Buttle says now, looking back at a more youthful, innocent time. "They just laughed it off.

"I was skating in the middle of nowhere in Northern Ontario at the time. I wasn't really even competitive yet."

And yet he would sit in the back seat of his parents' car, the rolling countryside passing him by, as the dream grew stronger in his head. "I started picturing myself on the podium at the Olympics," he said. "I would just sit back there and dream about it."

That same week in 1994, a young girl in a tiny Quebecois village an hour's drive east of Montreal found herself in the same moment. She watched intently as a waiflike Ukrainian teenager sobbed uncontrollably after her own dream came true, and couldn't help getting caught up in it.

"I still remember Oksana Baiul winning. It just stuck in my head," said Joannie Rochette, who was an 8-year-old sprite from Ile-Dupas, Que., at the time. "It was so emotional for her. She was crying tears of joy, all that drama. … I loved it. Whenever I think of the Olympics, I think of that."

Now, 12 winters later, it will be their turn. Buttle and Rochette, the reigning Canadian men's and ladies champions, carry a country's hopes to Torino, Italy, for the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. It is no small burden.

A Way of Life

Skating isn't just a sport or recreational activity in the Great White North, as it is lovingly called by the inhabitants of this vast country. It is a passion, a way of life. The snow flies, the water freezes and Canadians slip on a pair of blades. It is almost instinctive; natural, if you will.

And so Canadians pay attention closely every four years, when the Olympics captivate the globe. Mostly, they fervently follow the fortunes of the country's hockey heroes — hockey being the country's national winter sport.

Canadian champions Joannie Rochette and Jeffrey Buttle enjoyed a rare quiet moment while in Barrie, Ont. for the Mariposa Gala in early August. It has been all work since then as they prepare for the Olympic season.

"It's not necessarily that our skaters haven't delivered, it's that they've been up against formidable competition."
—CTV/TSN analyst Tracy Wilson

But there has always been a special place in the heart, too, for figure skating. It is, after all, a game played on ice, and Canadians have been rather good at it over the years.

Since 1948, Canadian skaters have produced 10 men's and two women's gold medalists at the World Figure Skating Championships. But at the Olympic Games, the medal count in the same time frame reads three bronze, six silver … and zero gold.

Only the legendary Barbara Ann Scott, in St. Moritz in 1948, has captured Olympic singles gold for Canada. It is a fact that astonishes many. Scott herself simply calls it sad.

Yet few, if any, will condemn Canadian skaters for that puzzling fact, and rightly so. The mere suggestion of it is enough to make some in the Canadian skating community bristle.

Up to the Task

"I don't think anyone can say (two-time Olympic silver medalist) Elvis Stojko didn't compete to deserve it. I don't think anyone can say Brian Orser (also twice a silver medalist) didn't compete to deserve it," said CTV/TSN analyst Tracy Wilson, a teammate of Orser's at the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, where she won an ice dance bronze medal with the late Rob McCall. "It's not necessarily that our skaters haven't delivered, it's that they've been up against formidable competition."

Some of that has been provided by untimely injuries. Few outside of Kurt Browning's inner circle knew that his back was an utter mess when he arrived at the Albertville Olympic Games in 1992, that he was nowhere near being the skater who had gloriously won three World Championships in a row.

And nobody, except those close to Stojko, knew of the torn groin muscle that afflicted the three-time World champion at the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games. Not until the unforgettable grimace that followed one of the most courageous free skates in Olympic history, but one that wasn't quite good enough to surpass the brilliance of Russia's Ilia Kulik on that night.

And so now, it is on Buttle and Rochette and the other Canadian singles skaters who join them in Torino. It is a duo without World Championship pedigree — every Olympic Games since 1984 has included a Canadian man with a World title on his resume — but one which shouldn't be discounted entirely.

Especially Buttle, suddenly the reigning World silver medalist. The 23-year-old from Smooth Rock Falls, Ont., had a breakout year in 2005, winning his first Canadian men's crown on the heels of a marvelous free skate in London, Ont., then ascending to the second step of the podium at Worlds in Moscow.

Buttle, who splits his training time between Barrie, Ont., and Lake Arrowhead, Calif., knows full well it has been a long process. And yet stardom seems to have arrived overnight. "I started improving [as a skating prospect], but I didn't really understand how much I was improving," he said. "Now all of a sudden, here I am, a contender at the Olympics.

"It's been a long time coming but at the same time, it kind of snuck up on me. It's a comforting feeling, knowing I'm going into the season with this possibility. But I haven't let the results in Moscow go to my head. If anything, it's motivated me."

Brian Orser believes skaters like Joanne Rochette and Jeffrey Buttle have an advantage when it comes to scoring because their country helped develop the new system.

Given the Moscow results, Buttle's name is sure to appear upon the inevitable lists of Canadian medal contenders in Torino. He sounds ready to handle the rush of media attention and pressure that goes along with them. "I'm in the running for a medal at the Olympics. That's obviously a goal of mine," he said. "Maybe there are people out there who believe I can do it, but it's more important that I believe I can do it."

"When I think of the pressure I faced [at the 1988 Olympics] … it just gives me the shivers. To deliver what I delivered under those circumstances was pretty admirable."
—Brian Orser

Such thoughts earn a nod of approval from longtime observers of the sport in Canada. Buttle gets it, they say, and seems headstrong enough to deal with what is coming.

"I can see it in his eyes, I can see it in the way he trains, that he knows it's the Olympics," Orser said. "He knows what it is, and he's acting and skating accordingly, which is good."

Skate Canada CEO Pam Coburn said Buttle is very focused and working very hard. "If he keeps skating the way he has been — and knowing Jeff, he's always looking to improve — he has great potential for the podium," she said.

Pressure and Perspective

Perhaps no Canadian can speak with such authority about the weight the Olympics can place upon one's shoulders than Orser. He was a nation's biggest golden hope in Calgary, the man who proudly carried the red maple leaf flag in the opening ceremony for the first Winter Games ever held in Canada.

But that week was merely the height of the pressure he felt, hardly the beginning. "It started the day after (I won) Worlds in Cincinnati in 1987," Orser said. "[The media] starting asking then, 'So, how do you feel about Calgary in 1988?'"

It was in his face every day, even on quiet walks down the street. Well-wishing Canadians telling him "go for the gold," hardly knowing that they were adding to the pressure of it all.

Orser was devastated when he came up agonizingly short in his famed "Battle of the Brians" with American Brian Boitano. But an older and wiser Orser now considers everything he faced that night in Calgary, and marvels at what he produced on the ice. "Now I can look back and say that was really something," he said. "When I think of the pressure I faced … it just gives me the shivers. To deliver what I delivered under those circumstances was pretty admirable."

Wilson, who was there in the stands at the Olympic Saddledome, agrees nobody can fathom the emotional wringer that Orser went through. And not just in Calgary. "It's the whole year of being the go-to person at the Olympics," she said. "I think it's so difficult to prepare yourself for it. You're so exhausted by it. You have to have real respect for what the competition is, and treat it differently. If your mindset is that it's like Worlds, you'll be thrown. … You have to be prepared for the barrage. People want to know about the Olympics wherever you go. At the grocery store, when you go to the gas station.

"It's almost like you want to go and hide, and surround yourself with people who are normal," Wilson added. "But I've heard skaters say even their parents are really different around them in an Olympic year. You're like a god in your own home. It freaks them out. You need to carve out a space of normalcy in your life and guard it. You have to know that you need to do that."

Rochette got an early taste of what's to come in the weeks leading up to the Moscow Worlds. She was the darling of the Canadian Championships in London, hailed as the best women's hope at Worlds in years. Her brilliant free skate at the John Labatt Centre put her on the front pages of papers across Canada, and touched off a media frenzy in her home province of Quebec.

Camera crews often showed up at her training rink in Montreal unannounced, desperate for a sound bite, any sound bite. "Lots of people were saying in the newspapers that I was going to win a medal at Worlds," said Rochette, 19. "It was a lot more stressful."

Rochette tumbled to 11th following a disastrous free skate in Moscow (she had been eighth in 2004 in Dortmund). In a way, it might have been a blessing for the season ahead.

"I have to prove myself again," said Rochette, who has reunited with longtime coach Manon Perron for the Olympic season. "I have to prove it to myself first. But I feel more comfortable now."

So, too, does the Canadian skating establishment feel more comfortable about where it is headed into these Olympics, and beyond. Buttle and Rochette are at the front end of the wave of young Canadian talent identified as prospects to put Canada back at the top of the skating world.

Jeffrey Buttle and Joannie Rochette have a little fun before the Mariposa Gala.

A Trial Run

A year ago, Skate Canada boldly declared its athletes would win a combined four medals at the Torino Olympic Games and the ensuing World Championships in Calgary. Three medals are projected for the 2010 Vancouver Games, when the Winter Olympic Games return to Canada for the first time in 22 years.

Coburn still believes they are targets that can be reached. "For 2006, I think that still holds," she said. "I see the potential for four medals between the Olympics and Calgary. And things are tracking very nicely for 2010, when you look at the young talent we have out on the Junior Grand Prix circuit now and the young talent on the national team now."

Buttle and Rochette might both be part of that Vancouver team, but neither is ready to commit to it yet. Both maintain their focus is on Italy in February, and nothing else.

"I don't want to get lazy and think, 'I always have the next Olympics,'" said Buttle. "I'm assuming that this will be the only Olympics that I do."

"I'd love to be in Vancouver," Rochette said, "But anything can happen in five years."

It has also been suggested that Canadians — and Buttle, in particular — have prospered since the institution of the International Skating Union's new scoring system where, in part, skaters are given points for each element performed. Skate Canada played a large hand in developing the system, and was the first to bring it on board at domestic competitions. As of this season, every qualifying step for the national championship will be judged by the system — even summer invitationals such as Minto Skate in Ottawa used it.

Orser believes Canadians can continue to succeed as long as skaters stay on top of the new system. "We have an advantage because we invented it," he said. "We know how to design programs with the new system. Everyone else will catch on eventually, but as long as we stay ahead of the curve, we'll be fine."

Skate Canada is also helping the groundwork in other ways to give its skaters the best possible chance in Torino. The association took its entire national team to the Olympic venue for a training camp in September. "We felt it was important to at least get on the ice, to get our bearings and know exactly what to expect when we get (to the Olympics) and be able to hit the ground running in February," Coburn said.

Rochette, for one, believes the experience accomplished even more than that. "Every day you're training, you'll have something to think about," she said before departing for Torino. "We'll have seen [the Olympic arena]. Every time you train, you can think about the Olympics and being on that ice."

Only this time, nearly 12 winters later, it isn't just about dreams.

It's about making dreams come true.