Chan, Chipeur locked up spots for Vancouver Olympics at Canadian figure skating championships

Chan wins third straight Canadian championship

LONDON, Ontario — Patrick Chan won his third straight Canadian figure skating title Sunday with a performance that left room for improvement at next months’ Vancouver Olympics.

The reigning world silver medallist scored 177.88 points for his free program to “Phantasia” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera,” and 268.02 overall, despite skipping the second jump on an opening combination and touching his hand down on a triple toe loop.

“I feel awesome,” Chan said with a wide grin. “I’m really taken aback with everything that’s happened here. With all the hardship that I had this season I was able to come through with a good performance here, and to get to put that jacket on, you start realizing, I’m really going to the Olympics.

“Just really humbled and I’m really happy with the way I performed.”

Chan appears headed in the right direction after a few tumultuous months that included a bout of the flu, a torn calf muscle that left him playing catch-up, and then news just a month before the Olympics that Don Laws was quitting as his coach.

“I think we set him on a good path,” Chan’s coach and choreographer Lori Nichol said. “He’s been working hard, he’s been working smart, and I think tonight showed the progress of that, and there’s a lot of work to do.

“I have no question he’ll be totally ready (by Vancouver).”

Vaughn Chipeur won the silver with 222.10 points, and Kevin Reynolds moved up from fifth place to win bronze after landing a pair of quads that earned him 216.49 points.

Chipeur and the 19-year-old Chan will fill Canada’s two spots to Vancouver.

Also going to Vancouver are ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Only four of the 12 athletes Joannie Rochette, Jessica Dube and partner Bryce Davison, and Anabelle Langlois — have any Olympic experience.

Rochette came back from her own frustrating season to lay down possibly her finest skate yet in the long program.

“I think everyone is ready for Vancouver, and even here, the decision was tough in a couple of events, it is so close,” said Rochette, who was fifth at the Grand Prix final last month. “We have more depth now (in Canada), and that’s why I think the top athletes are getting stronger and stronger.”

Both the pairs and ice dance events came down to the wire, with less than a point deciding silver and bronze in the dance.

“It’s a sad thing that we only have two entries in every event, but you know what? It also brought the best out of everyone,” said Langlois, the team’s oldest member at 28. “How the skating has gone this weekend, we know that people have been fighting and training all year for it, so I know we have fighters and nobody’s going to just go for the experience.”