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Rochette rides wave of emotion
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – When it was over, when Joannie Rochette had poured every bit of her heavy heart into the performance of her life, when the entire Pacific Coliseum had come unglued, cheering, stomping and crying throughout, the 24-year-old bent over and let the tears drop down onto the Olympic ice.
“Words can not describe,” Rochette said through a spokesperson.
Not 48 hours after she lost her mother, Therese, to a heart attack, Rochette refused to let grief derail their shared dream of skating here. With her father, Normand, overcome with emotion as he watched from the stands, Rochette sailed through a courageous program, cleanly landing all of her jumps and leaving the skating world in awe of her strength.
“Right now I think her mother is jumping up and down in the sky,” William Thompson of Skate Canada said. “That was the dream performance.”
Rochette, who few thought would even take the ice, didn’t just compete, she delivered. She didn’t just attempt, she soared. She didn’t just inspire with her determination, she thrilled with her grace, poise and ability.
She isn’t just in the competition. She’s sitting in third place heading into Thursday’s long program with a personal season-best 71.36. In storybook fashion, she trails just Korea’s Kim Yu-Na and Japan’s Mao Asada.
“She is here to try to win a medal, if not win the whole thing,” Michael Slipchuk of Skate Canada said.
Win the whole thing?
Oh, my.
Rochette simply taking the ice was cause for roaring cheers and cheeks stained with tears. This was the resilience of the human heart, a daughter trying to honor the sacrifices of her mother by fulfilling their goal of Olympic competition.
They’re small-town people, from a 500-person hamlet in Quebec. Normand was a hockey coach who put little Joannie on blades young and then worked two and three jobs to finance her dream of being an Olympic champion. Mother and daughter used to load up the car and drive through snowstorms and Canadian prairies, one tournament after the next, stitching costumes from the front seat in a shared journey that delivered six Canadian championships, a fifth-place finish at the Turin Olympics and was supposed to culminate here at their home-nation Games.
Rochette had become a contender in the last 18 months, better than ever, and they wanted gold, wanted to surprise everyone, wanted to make “O Canada” ring through the Vancouver night.
Joannie had arrived two weeks ago to take in the Opening Ceremony and finish her training here. Therese and Normand traveled Saturday, visited with their daughter and then retired to an apartment they had rented downtown. That’s when Normand found his wife unresponsive and rushed her to a hospital where she was pronounced dead at age 55.
He then made a lonely, early Sunday morning trip to the Olympic Village to break the news to his only child. Within hours she reaffirmed a single goal. She was going to skate. She was going to show the world the champion Therese had raised.
And show she did.
With the arena holding its breath, her face cracked with emotion as she took the center of the ice to begin. Then just as quickly it went back to full concentration.
When the first bars of La Cumparsita tango began you couldn’t tell anything was wrong. She was a rock. She was a pro. By the time she landed a triple-Lutz, double-toe-loop combo, the sold-out arena was going wild. They clapped to the music. They cheered every spin, rejoiced in every twirl and took in a simply magical effort.
At the end they roared like a hockey crowd. The often demur elites that watch international figure skating were screaming into the air. The melting pot of nationalities gave up their own rooting interests and applauded like she was their own daughter.
Rochette just stood and wept as the cheers tumbled down onto the ice.
“Hard to handle,” she said of the crowd. “But appreciate the support. I will remember this forever … I have no regrets.”
Her brilliance had been too much to ask. To take the ice was going to be enough. To stay upright throughout would’ve been legendary.
To wind up third? To hit the program better than she had all year? To face down what is immense pressure in the best times and deliver perfection in the worst?
“She put a performance that was so heroic,” said Skate Canada’s Thompson, himself crying at the end for the first time ever at a skating competition. “It’s an incredible story.”
In the locker room Rochette was still in tears, according to Slipchuk, still coming to terms with everything. As brilliant as the skate was, it didn’t change the reality of her life. Her mother isn’t coming back. The mourning process still must come.
“It’s been a long 48 hours for her and a lot built up,” Slipchuk said. “I think it was a release today.”
Rochette will take Wednesday off, stay off the ice and regroup, the officials said. Thursday presents an even bigger challenge, an even longer skate, and even more pressure awaits.
It should be too much, but now how do you not believe? She’s in position for a medal. She’s not conceding gold. Joannie Rochette just taught these Games about courage, just rocked this arena with her strength and just laid bare the power of the human will.
And she’s not done. She’s not even close.
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