Chapter 27
As a kid, I had always loved to watch the opening and closing ceremonies.
It was always interesting to see what things the host country chose to highlight from their culture and history.
Some years were more fun than others. Other years were more educational.
I’d always had a soft spot for ones that were more heavily inundated with pop culture.
There was something about being able to recognize the things that were playing out that helped get me excited.
This year, I was going to miss a lot of it. While the beginning of the ceremony was unfolding, I had to be getting ready to make the walk around the stadium with the rest of the Canadian athletes who had already made the trip.
I hung out backstage with the other skaters. Some of the athletes didn’t make the trip in time for the opening ceremonies, but the figure skaters had to. Our events were scheduled so early that we didn’t have a choice. In fact, the team event had started earlier that day.
The men’s and pairs short programs had taken place one after the other.
As the highest-ranking Canadian pair, Dom and I had been tapped to compete.
We had waited with Nick Foster, who would skate for the men.
The dozen other skaters we had come over with – Emma Kelly and Philippe Michaud, Madeline Roy and Andrew Kerst, Elodie Bergeron, Grace Nguyen, Blake Richardson, Jonas Vogel, Alexa Hoffman and Seth Dawson, and Sierra McCormack and Ben Hillier – watched from the stands.
I didn’t know Nick very well. Dom knew him a bit better, but we still only saw him at major competitions.
Between the fact that he trained at the opposite end of the country, that the top-ranking skaters only competed at some of the events in the Grand Prix circuit, and the most competitive events, like World’s, we didn’t see him very often.
From what I knew of him, he was friendly and up for anything.
He had been on the same trans-Atlantic flight as us, but that wasn’t a surprise.
Most of the athletes who had to be ready to go at the very beginning of the Games had come over together.
We had talked with Nick while everyone waited for things to get started.
Since there were eight events in the competition instead of just two, there wasn't as much pressure.
Even if you competed in both the short and long programs, there were six skates that you had to rely on your teammates to do well in.
The fact that it was ranked scoring with each skater earning between one and ten points for their team versus needing to eek out every point helped, too.
Nick finished in third, earning a respectable eight points for Team Canada. He high fived Dom after finding out how he had placed. “Not bad. Hiroshi is going to be a fucking beast individually. Not like we didn’t already know that.” He’d added the last part hastily.
Hiroshi had placed first, as expected, putting Japan in an early lead after just the one event.
Having seen how good he was during practices back home was one thing, but seeing him in competition was another.
For such a quiet guy, he was a major threat on the ice.
After he won, he nodded to Dom and me in recognition as we were getting ready to go on the ice, but I didn’t see him have a full conversation with anyone.
Dom and I finished second, close behind Evgenia Levedeva and Pavel Sorokin. Losing the extra point was frustrating, but not as much as seeing how close our scores were.
“So close,” Dom whispered in my ear when he pulled me in for a hug. “They are within striking distance.”
I nodded. A couple of months ago, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Yet here we were, with less than three points separating us from them. We would need to be at the top of our game, but it wasn’t a stretch to think that we could close the gap.
While we waited for the opening ceremony to start, Dom and I stood with the rest of the figure skating team in a large group.
We had no choice but to be squeezed together with athletes from all the other sports.
I was glad that I had stuck with the other skaters once we arrived.
It would be next to impossible to find them now amongst so many other people dressed in identical outfits.
There were hundreds of us wearing the same outfit.
We had the red winter jackets Dom had talked about on the plane, which had black and white accents.
Our hats were the same colours, with white pompoms at the top and maple leaves around the bands.
There were large matching white maple leaves on our knit mittens.
Our bottoms were simple, fitted white pants and black boots.
The outfits looked nice, which I was thankful for.
There had been several times where the athletes on TV had had to wear some out-there getups.
The one downside to our look was that so many people jam-packed into such a small area produced a lot of body heat.
Thankfully, whoever had designed the jackets had taken that into consideration.
They looked like they should be suitable for winter, but were unlined to keep us from overheating.
Even so, I saw that most people had theirs unzipped for the time being.
We would have to zip them up to look uniform before we were called out, but there were plenty of countries ahead of us.
Even though we were well back from the entrance to the stadium, the muffled music could still be heard.
The occasional exclamation or cheer from the crowd made it clear that something interesting was happening out there.
I looked around, watching everyone else.
There were some people walking to and from the washrooms or trying to find their friends, but for the most part, people seemed to be where they needed to be.
I’d spotted several workers trying to keep everyone corralled in the right spots, with varying degrees of success.
That wasn’t surprising. There was only so much you could do in a crowd of thousands of people.
“The parade of nations will start in five minutes,” came a commanding voice through the crowd. I looked around, trying to see who was speaking, but I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from. All I could see was a sea of red jackets.
“I wish I could see better,” I complained.
A lot of the other female skaters were short, but most of the athletes and coaches had at least a head on me.
It made it difficult to see what was going on in here.
I worried that I would struggle to see the last part of the ceremony, even when we had the chance to spread out.
“This is it, guys,” Blake Richardson, one of the singles skaters, said. He was uncharacteristically pale.
“Why do you sound nervous now?” Nick asked, brow furrowed. “You’ve made it to the Winter Games. I’m sure you can handle walking around in a circle without tripping over your own two feet.”
“Even if you do trip, there are literally hundreds of us dressed the same. Nobody will even notice. Trust me, there’s a lot worse that could happen here,” Elodie said in a soothing tone. Clearly, the events from four years ago were still weighing on her mind. “Just enjoy yourself tonight.”
The noise turned into a steady hum as countries were introduced at varying intervals.
Some countries had only a handful of athletes, while others had hundreds.
Up to that point in my life, the Parade of Nations had been a chance to see who was chosen as flag bearers and how each country had dressed.
The bits of trivia given by the announcers on TV were a good way to get a sense of who was favoured or memorable from a variety of sports.
This year, that was replaced by the sound of the crowd growing louder as the countries were announced and we moved closer and closer to the entrance.
Finally, it was our turn. Over people’s heads, I could just make out the tip of the Canadian flag at the start of our group.
Earlier in the evening, I had spotted Jenny Greenhill getting ready.
Since she would be at the forefront of our delegation, she’d had somebody making sure that she looked the part.
One of her curling teammates had been rearranging some of Jenny’s curls when I had walked by.
Next to them, somebody had been waiting with the gear she would need to help her support the flag during the walk.
We were about a third of the way back in the delegation, surrounded by a sea of red jackets and maple leaf mittens that were waving to the crowd.
I had done my best to mentally prepare for what I was going to see, but there was nothing I could do to truly be ready for what it was like to walk out.
It was nighttime, but you would never know by how bright it was.
There were so many bright lights, illuminating us as we walked in for the cameras.
I craned my neck to look at the stands as I walked.
There were flashes of cameras and phones from the crowd, which was larger than any I had ever skated in front of.
On TV it looked like the stadiums were busy for the ceremonies, but there was no way to really prepare for just how big it was in person.
Logically, I knew there had to be tons of room since relatives and dignitaries had come from all over the globe, mixed in with tons of travellers and locals.
That knowledge didn’t prepare me for the noise of the crowd and the music.
Among the noise, I heard the soft voice of Sierra McCormack just behind me. “Holy crap.” The awe I felt was mirrored in her tone.
As we walked, moving as a group, I felt a tug on my mittened hand. My head swung to see Elodie, eyes sparkling with excitement. “This is crazy, huh?” she said.
I nodded. “You didn’t do it justice when you talked about what it was like.”