Yu-Na Kim, Yuzuru Hanyu, Javi Fernandez and friends: how the Toronto Cricket Club became skating mecca

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TORONTO - Put more than a dozen highly decorated figure skaters on the same practice ice at the same time, and there is bound to be some friendly in-your-face stuff.

Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernández and Nam Nguyen will do quadruple jump after quadruple jump, each trying not to be the first to pop a jump or fall. Gabrielle Daleman and Sonia Lafuente will do the same with triples.

What each wants most, though, is to do well enough that Brian Orser, or one of his fellow coaches at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, rings the 16-inch brass bell that hangs outside the glassed-in, computerized music room on one side of the ice surface.

That sound is the reward for anyone who does a clean run-through of a competitive program in practice.

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An "every-other-year girl" like Kwan? Gracie Gold can only dream of it

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An "every-other-year girl" like Kwan? Gracie Gold can only dream of it

The question about reigning U.S. figure skating champion Gracie Gold always has been her inconsistency, especially when it counts most internationally.

This time, on a Thursday conference call advancing the World Championships beginning Mar. 30 in Boston, the question was phrased in terms of how much confidence she could gain from knowing her coach, Frank Carroll, had produced big event “money” skaters like Michelle Kwan and Evan Lysacek.

Gold answered it by saying, “They weren’t always perfect.   Michelle kind of was the every-other-year girl.”

Gold undoubtedly was referring to Kwan’s having won her first three of five world titles only in even-numbered years (1996-98-2000) and then, after breaking that pattern, the final two  in odd-numbered years (2001-03).

The odd-even thing was something Kwan joked about in 2000 and 2001.

But Gold’s analysis is just plain silly.

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Slow the hype so Hunter, latest high school track phenom, has time to grow

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Slow the hype so Hunter, latest high school track phenom, has time to grow

In a very small corner of U.S. sports fandom, the biggest story last weekend was not the Super Bowl.

It was the performance of a high school runner named Drew Hunter in a mile race Saturday afternoon at the Armory in New York.  Hunter clocked 3 minutes, 58.25 seconds, breaking Alan Webb’s 15-year-old U.S. high school indoor mile record by 1.41 seconds.

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Now (or never?) for U.S. women to end skate worlds medal drought

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Now (or never?) for U.S. women to end skate worlds medal drought

Gracie Gold should have an excellent chance at a world medal simply by skating her best in both programs.  Ashley Wagner will likely need help (i.e. mistakes) by other skaters to get there, but she also is in contention.

Of course, I said the same thing in reverse last year (Wagner could do it on her own, Gold could do it with help), when the U.S. women’s medal drought at worlds reached nine years.

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