BEIJING, China — After missing out on the U.S. figure skating team four years ago in Pyeongchang, Kaitlin Hawayak and Jean-Luc Baker have made a brutally difficult but carefully crafted decision to lead them to the Beijing Olympics.
The American ice dancers broke with their longtime coaches, led by respected choreographer Pasquale Camerlengo, and moved their training base to Canada. From there, they began to work under the exacting eye of double Olympians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, her husband, at the renowned Ice Academy in Montreal.
Suddenly, Hawayak and Baker were surrounded by world champions and Olympic medalists at an elite ice dancer factory – the most dominant school in figure skating. It forced Hawayak and Baker to take their art to a level they never thought possible.
And it worked. They traveled to the Beijing Games, where the duo will perform when the individual competition begins with Rhythm Dance on Saturday night at the Beijing Capital Omnisports Palace.
The bad news? Most of their already very accomplished teammates will also be there.
“When we hit the ice for the first time in Montreal, you’re there to be your best, but also to be a team member who supports others,” explained Hawayak. That’s who we are. We are all teammates in our camp. And that makes times like this even more special for us, knowing that we can lean on each other when we get to the competition. »
Of course, Hawayak and Baker will be representing their country first and foremost this weekend. It will be the same for Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue as well as for the third American duo, composed of Madison Chock and Evan Bates. They all train in Montreal.
But they will also face the favorites to win the gold medal in Beijing, the French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron.
Hubbell and Donohue, who finished fourth in Pyeongchang, have a shot at the podium after winning two silver medals at worlds in recent years.
The biggest competition outside of the Montreal Ice Academy includes Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier and Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, who train in Toronto.
As if to bring out the international flavor that is so present in Montreal, Dubreuil and Lauzon also competed in Beijing with the Canadian duo of Nikolaj Sorensen and Laurence Fournier-Beaudry, the Chinese team of Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu, the Spanish duo of ‘Olivia Smart and Adrian Diaz and Britain’s Lewis Gibson and Lilah Fear.
In other words, Dubreuil and Lauzon will be busy over the next few days.
Dubreuil and Lauzon are used to the spotlight that comes with success. They coached Canadian dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir to a second consecutive gold medal when they posted a record high score in Pyeongchang.
But the number of elite skaters and the level of talent that Dubreuil and Lauzon are monitoring in Montreal have only increased over the years. One only has to think of the NHK Trophy, in Japan, a high level event in which Papadakis and Cizeron broke the world records in rhythmic dance, free dance and total score.
The astronomical marks are still holding up three years later, although no one would be surprised to see them finally fall in Beijing.
If so, there is a good chance that Dubreuil and Lauzon contributed to it.
