Figure skating pair will compete in Vancouver 2010 Olympics
Vanessa Crone and Paul Poirier have been with Scarborough club for 10 years
Figure skating pair will compete in Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
Coach Carol Lane gives instruction to Olympic figure skaters Vanessa Crone and Paul Poirier as they work on their routine Friday at the Centennial Recreation Centre.
Staff photo/DAN PEARCE
What started out as an unforeseeable goal - coupled with a nervous laugh - has now become an Olympic dream.The Scarboro Figure Skating Club dance duo of Vanessa Crone, of North York and Paul Poirier, of Unionville, qualified for the Olympics and will be heading to Vancouver on Feb. 11.The pair will be doing their Compulsory Dance on Feb. 19 at 4:45 p.m., their Original Dance Feb. 21 at 4:15 p.m. and their Free Dance Feb. 22 at 4:45 p.m. While training at the club with coach Carol Lane the pair laughed when she suggested they could qualify for the junior championships. Two years later, in 2007, they were the Canadian national junior champions."Then I said to them I think you could go to the Olympics," Lane said. "They laughed again, but here we are. They work very hard and apply themselves. They have phenomenal talent and have not even scratched the surface."Realistically Lane said the pair do not have a chance to medal in Vancouver due to the way judging works in figure skating. "There are four teams in medal contention," she said adding one is Canadian, two are American and one is Russian."We're working within the nine to 12 place teams," she said. "Do they have the ability to break the top 10? Absolutely."Skate Canada hosted interviews with the media on Jan. 29 with Crone and Poirier at their club, at the Centennial Recreation Centre on Ellesmere Road.The pair placed 12th in the World Championships in Ice Dance in 2009. They placed fourth in the Four Continents Championships that same year. The Scarborough club's elite ice dance program was co-founded by Lane and her husband Jon. Carol is the choreographer and Jon is the technical coach.Carol began skating in London, England at seven years old. She started ice dancing with her partner at 15 and competed in the Junior Nationals. The next year the pair competed in Senior Nationals. She trained under the direction of her now husband Jon and won a senior national championship bronze and an alternate spot on the World and Olympic team. Jon began skating at Queen's Ice Club in London, England. He was a National Ice Skating Association (NSA) gold medalist in Great Britain, a silver medalist with the British Senior Dance Championship, a European Championship bronze medalist in 1968 and a silver medalist in 1969 with his partner Janet Sawbridge. Jon said his job with Crone and Poirier is to examine their moves."Their program is high on the technical side," Jon said. "I look at the mechanics of their moves. I might make some suggestions, but Carol does the choreography."He said even though the Olympics are less than two weeks away their training schedule hasn't changed."We've been keeping an even keel," he said. "It's just another day at the office. I know they're ready for this. They've been ready for four years."Carol agreed."We're just doing more fiddling with their routine," she said, referring to it as fine tuning. "We're certainly not over-training. If I were out there (on the ice) teaching now at the last minute then we'd be in trouble."Carol knows what it's like for the pair since she was an elite skater in England. She just missed going to the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980 when there were two spots and three team members."It's absolutely marvelous to be going to the Olympics as a coach," she said. "This is what coaches dream about."And the fact she has coached the pair - who she nicknamed the ferrets - since they were nine and 10 years old is an added bonus."They just wouldn't stand still," she said. "We'd be on the ice and they'd be buzzing around. I thought Paul wasn't paying attention half the time."She said she realized he was when she made him repeat what she just said after seeing him looking around and thinking he was not paying attention."I said 'tell me what I just said' and he repeated it verbatim," she said. "Then I knew what I was working with."She recognized the pair had talent from the start."Paul will do anything you tell him," she said. "He really makes it look easy. Vanessa has a real skater's brain. She can picture exactly what you want and then just do it."The pair are excited about going to Vancouver."We've been very focused on going to the Olympics," said Crone, 19. "It's our chance to show the world what we're made of," said Poirier, 18. "We deserve to be there. We want to show people we're good enough to be there."They support each other even on the ice during competitions."We're expert ventriloquists," Poirier said with a laugh. "We talk on the ice all the time. We give each other little reminders and say 'breathe here' and 'smile.'"Poirier said during one competition he told Crone her nose was bleeding all over her outfit and dripping on the ice."I thought I just had sequins falling off my costume," Crone said with a laugh. She also said she "just ignores it" if she gets a gouge in her calf from being kicked by Poirier's blade or slashes her hand open on her own skate blade when she grabs it for a move."I don't feel it anymore," she said.In Vancouver their Olympic dream will finally become a reality."We'll get our Olympic uniform," Crone said."Then it will sink in," Poirier added.