After a bumpy Olympic ride, Canadian pair champions Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison are hoping for more this week at the world figure skating championships.
They're hoping for redemption.
Sixth at the Olympics isn't bad, they said yesterday after practice at the swoop-topped Palavela arena. It's the same arena (now with a new red paint job) where they finished 10th four years ago at the Turin Olympics, at a time the budding stars were showing all the promise in the world.
But while a 10th four years ago was encouraging, a sixth last month was downright discouraging.
The Vancouver Olympics should have been their coronation, and although sixth in the world isn't terrible (they finished seventh at the world championships last year), they said yesterday they were more upset with how they skated than how they placed. Had they skated cleanly, and finished sixth, it would have been enough.
A third at the world championships two years ago suggested that Dubé and Davison were well on their way to being contenders in Vancouver. And since 2008, they'd added a triple twist, which improved with time and some other cool tricks.
What happened in Vancouver?
"Everybody who skates at this level knows how on any given day that anything can happen," said Davison, 24, of Huntsville, Ont. "I think we really know that. It takes hard work and it takes consistency to be among the best."
Finding that out was a rude awakening for the team that drew tears after their expressive The Way We Were long program at the Canadian championships in London, Ont., in January. They got a thunderous ovation for it. That was Dubé and Davison at their best, with an emotive power that can make you weep. Not many of their competitors at the highest level can do that. But at the Olympic Games, that power fizzled.
Yesterday, Davison said he knew that could have been an Olympic-winning program.
"I think that's another reason that we're disappointed, because we had the program to do it. When we did it at nationals, there were people crying in the stands. That's exactly what we wanted."
Dubé says because they had done it so spectacularly three weeks before, they expected it would be even better at the Olympics.
The routine, choreographed by Torontonian David Wilson, is so special that they plan to keep it for next year - and yes, they will continue to compete next year, although perhaps not committing to the Sochi Olympics in Russia. They'll take things one year at a time.
Davison said they feel as though there is still room to make it even better. They can deliver the emotional side of it, they know. They want to make the program more intricate, but also to show emotion with their entire bodies, not just their faces. This is a gift that skaters such as Kim Yu-Na, Stéphane Lambiel and Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo possess.
With their secret weapon - their free skate - having wilted in the Olympic spotlight, Davison said it took them four days to realize how disappointed they were. They put the bad thoughts out of their mind for days, as they attended other skating events, took in a couple of hockey games, enjoyed the energy of Vancouver's hopping downtown.
Finally, they had to face the music.
That's when they realized they could have been third, had they skated two clean programs. "It was hard to take," Davison said.
When it sunk in, they talked with their coaches, and decided what they needed to do to improve. It hasn't been easy in the weeks since the Olympics. They went right back to work two days after they got back from Vancouver.
Dubé got busy improving the consistency of her triple Salchow, which has been her nemesis for a couple of years - and she had fallen on it in Vancouver. The team has switched around the order of elements in the short program to put the jump first, something they've always done in the past.
The pair short program begins tomorrow.