Thursday, July 15, 2010

Comings and Goings.

Two of Canada's best skaters have hung up their competetive skates this week - Pairs skater Craig Buntin and singles skater Vaughn Chipeur.

Vaughn Chipeur was Canada's silver medallist for the last 2 years behind Patrick Chan. I first saw him at 2007 Skate Canada- (incidentally the first major skating event I went to). He had a great freedom in his skating. He finished 12th at the 2009 Worlds and represented Canada at the 2010 olympics, finishing 23rd. Chipeur plans to do professional ice shows across Canada then aboard Royal Caribbean Cruises (Doesn't sound like a bad life to me!)

Craig Buntin won the Canadian pairs title 3 years running with Valerie Marcoux and finished 11th at the 2006 Olympics. In 2007 he paired up with Megan Duhamel. The pair finished 6th at the 2007 Worlds. After skating their socks off at the 2010 Nationals they were devistated to finish 3rd and narrowly miss an Olympic place in Vancouver. They did however win a bronze at 4 Continents a few weeks later.

My favourite memory of Craig was at the 2008 Trophee Bompard where in the free programme his hand was accidentally sliced by Megan's blade. He was quickly patched up by his coaches and they went on to complete the programme, all the while blood seeping through the thick bandage onto Megan's dress. Despite the automatic 2pt deduction for stopping the programme, they went on to win a bronze that day.

In his spare time Buntin started the company 'teabean white coffee' specialising in baked, rather than roasted coffee beans. He has been accepted onto the MBA programme at McGill university from August. Megan will continue to Skate with new parter Eric Radford.


Also a farewell in the Gymnastics World. Romanian talent Claudia Voicu has chosen to retire, aged only 16, due to recurrent knee injuries. European silver medallist Anamaria Tamarajan is also very likely to retire too. The ranks of healthy gymnasts in Deva are getting a bit thin.

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