Sports — 11 January 2014
The Canadian National Skating Championships return to Ottawa

2014 Canadian Tire National Skating Championships

From January 10 to January 15, 2014, Ottawa’s Canadian Tire Centre will host the 100th anniversary of Skate Canada’s National Skating Championships. This exciting event will bring 250 of the Nation’s top figure skaters together in senior, junior and novice categories, to compete for spots on Canada’s official figure skating team, and most importantly, a chance to participate and represent Canada at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games taking place in Sochi, Russia. Once the senior events come to a close on Sunday, January 12th , Skate Canada will nominate their picks for the Olympic figure skating team to the Canadian Olympic Committee. The selected Canadian figure skaters will be that much closer to living their dreams of competing in the Olympics.

Fans of figure skating can purchase single day, senior championship, or junior and novice championship packages. This year the seniors are up first, followed by juniors and novice events.

Friday, January 10th events consisted of Senior Women’s and Ice Dance Short Program, as well as Senior Men’s and Pairs Short Program. Notable figure skaters for this day included past champions Patrick Chan, and pairs Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford. All of the figure skaters showed their strength, agility, and of course, balance. The stakes were high for these competitors and the crowd could feel the energy and passion as they looked on.

Both Men’s and Pairs short programs meant that all competitors had to perform their own creative program, but must also include the exact same components in their programs, such as double axels, triple loops, jump combos and combination spins, or for Pairs, specific throws and lifts.

All competitors were received well by Canadian figure skating fans (especially fan favourite Patrick Chan!), and should be proud of the talent this country has to offer. If this is any indication of how Canada will perform in the 2014 Winter Olympics, Canada will do just fine.

If you’re interested in learning more about the National Skating Championships , Skate Canada or skate-related festivities happening around Ottawa, visit http://www.skatecanada.ca for more information.
Lisa Bertolo

All Images courtesy of Bennan Schnell
[Click to enlarge]

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