With C+C Music Factory blaring 鈥渆verybody dance now鈥� on the PA, three-time world champion and two-time Winter Olympics silver-medallist Elvis Stojko did just that with his nifty moves, in bringing the house down to end the first half of Stars on Ice on Tuesday night at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
But the 47-year-old Stojko鈥檚 Olympic turns were at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 and Nagano, Japan, in 1998.
The Canadian future, pointing to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, was represented on Blanshard by current two-time Canadian-champion Nam Nguyen.
The crowd of 4,567 at the Memorial Cente was down from last year鈥檚 sold-out throng of 6,889, repeating a theme from across the country, as the 12-city 2019 Canadian tour put on its penultimate performance ahead of the concluding show on Thursday at Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
The attendance drop was understandable. Last year鈥檚 show was generational and took place amid the golden glow of sa国际传媒鈥檚 standout performances in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Everybody wanted a piece of it.
But the 2018 Winter Games are old news. The big Canuck draws, Pyeongchang double gold-medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, have retired from both competitive and show skating. Yet, sa国际传媒鈥檚 Pyeongchang Olympic team gold medallists Patrick Chan, Kaetlyn Osmond, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford returned to headline a still-steller cast on Tuesday evening. Duhamel skated while 15 weeks pregnant, which has got to be some kind of first for Blanshard Street.
Osmond, Duhamel and Radford also won 2018 Olympic bronze medals, to go with their team gold, and three-time Olympic medallist Chan is a three-time world champion.
A standout international addition to the cast this year is two-time world champion and two-time Olympic silver-medallist Evgenia Medvedeva of Russia, who skated exceptionally in her Blanshard Street debut.
Canadian ice dancers, long in the shadow nationally and internationally to Virtue and Moir, had outstanding nights. National silver medalists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirer skated to a haunting rendition of Don McLean鈥檚 Starry Starry Night while three-time world medallists Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje were energetic to the rousing and much-covered Land of a Thousand Dances.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a good group,鈥� said four-time world champion Kurt Browning, who skated, one Canadian legend to another, to Gordon Lightfoot鈥檚 If You Could Read My Mind.
鈥淭he Island fans are so knowledgeable and we always treat Victoria as a kind of reward for us near the end of the tour.鈥�
