Day 1, age 20, was just about perfect for Daleman, as she proceeded with near perfection, certainly with a feathery lightness and sure-footedness, through seven triples, three of them in combination, along with elegant spirals, on-the-button spins and lively foot sequences.
“I didn’t even care that I couldn’t breathe. I just skated from my heart.’’
And she knew it was in the bag after nailing a middle-of-the-routine triple Lutz-double toe-double toe, and catching coach Tracey Wainman’s eyes at the end boards. “I just got the biggest smile on my face. I could play with the audience. Everything was over, the hard work had paid off.’’
Well, hardly over. There was still a triple loop directly ahead and a triple-double sequence towards the end of the program. “I said to myself, no matter what, you do this loop, no matter what.”
Every skater has an element they don’t like or approach with trepidation, often not the most technically challenging.
For Osmond, it was also the loop, which she fell on after executing seamless triple-triple and double Axel-triple toe opening combinations for her Black Swan routine, followed by a confident Lutz.
“In my loop, I lost a bit of my confidence on the landing,” the three-time national champion from Newfoundland admitted with a scowl.
She’s historically had a wrestling match with it.
“That loop has probably been the most frustrating element for me. In competition, it’s been so off and on but at home it’s my most consistent element. At home I’ll do it 15 times in a row and land it 15 times. Here, once again, the only time I missed it was in my program. But at least this time I stayed on my feet.”
The 22-year-old fell again on her very next jump, a triple flip. “Silly mistakes are what’s getting me. I haven’t missed that second flip in my program in I don’t know how long. But overall I’m really happy with my performance. I feel I performed that program as best as I could. At the end I felt super-strong, super-powerful.”
She drew a free skate mark of 147.32, 218.73 overall.
Daleman and Osmond are both going to the Olympics, along with third-place finisher Larkyn Austman, 19, from nearby New Westminster. But Osmond acknowledges that it will feel different, arriving in Pyeongchang without the eclat of a national title.
“Going in as not the national champion is almost going to give me an extra boost while I’m there, to make up for the mistakes that I made here. But knowing that I still have the worlds’ silver under my belt makes me feel confident, makes me feel really strong.”
- Torstar News Service
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