Post by Admin on Jan 30, 2021 23:56:50 GMT
He is one of his sport’s ultimate travelling men, a coaching savant whose desire to develop the world’s best figure skaters is hardly constrained by his own country’s borders. In ordinary times, Brian Orser would be bouncing across Asia or Europe countless times over, racking up the frequent flier miles. It has been his life and his livelihood for almost 14 years.
But these are not ordinary times. In a COVID-19 world, international travel is almost at a standstill. And so Orser’s passport has been starved of travel stamps for most of 2020 — at least since the global pandemic’s tentacles fully extended their reach into North America back in the spring. “I have not been on an airplane since Junior Worlds, so that would be the beginning of March,” said Orser of his trip to Estonia. “I would normally have done a couple hundred thousand miles by now.”
For coaches such as Orser, however, that is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to adapting to a new world. While COVID restrictions in Canada vary from province to province — sometimes even city to city — the bottom line is that conditions are vastly different for everyone and ‘normal’ now takes on a new definition. In Toronto, those restrictions were tightened in late November with a lockdown — the second since the start of the pandemic — that shuttered many arenas across Canada’s largest city. However, the Province of Ontario granted an exemption for high- performance athletes, meaning training could continue at the Cricket Club, but with strict regulations. Only 10 people were allowed on the ice during a single session, and that number included skaters and coaches.
As Orser sees it, though, the fact that training can continue at all is vital for his club’s skaters, and he views every opportunity as a blessing these days — no matter what level of restrictions must be adhered to by one and all. “We are grateful that we can open for elite athletes. We are following the guidelines and not pushing anything,” he said. “This is the way it has been since March. When we got back on the ice on May 27 (after sports venues were allowed to re-open in Toronto), we had certain guidelines to follow — and they keep changing.
“It has been a major task for our skating coordinator because at first five people were allowed on the ice at the same time, then 10, then 25, and now we are back to 10. It is always a challenge for her because we are trying to keep the coaches busy. We have to adjust, so there is no sense in complaining about anything. We just have to go with the flow, go with the hand we are dealt and follow the rules.”
Those rules extend to virtually every aspect of a skater’s daily routine at the Cricket Club. There are strict directions about entering and exiting the club, and masks must be worn everywhere except when skaters are on the ice for their training sessions. “There is a certain protocol to the direction of flow, that continues in one direction,” said Orser, the 1987 World champion and two-time Olympic silver medalist. “That includes where the kids put their bags, put on their skates and go on to the ice; where they come off the ice and take off their skates, and then exit the building. Everybody has the routine down, everybody follows it … it’s not really much of an inconvenience. It has a nice flow to it, and everybody wears their masks.”
While coaches are not required to wear masks while on the ice, Orser said he and the rest of the club’s staff have made the decision to do so. “When you are out of your house, it almost feels strange not to be wearing a mask,” he said. “If I go into a store or any building I have to wear one. In any common space in my condo building I have to wear one. All the coaches feel like it’s a good practice.”
With that as a backdrop, Orser and the Cricket team are pushing forward as best as they can, but the group is still not quite whole. The club is known as a training base for some of the world’s top skaters, but most of Orser’s current international students still remain in their homelands. Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu is in Japan; Jun-Hwan Cha is skating on his own in South Korea and Polish champion Ekaterina Kurakova is also still on the other side of the world.
None of this is likely to change until the pandemic shows signs of abating in a significant way. The biggest obstacle for all of them are the ongoing international travel restrictions imposed by the Canadian government for “non-essential” entry, which will remain in place until at least Jan. 21. The rules are different for Americans crossing the border by car, which is how skaters such as Jason Brown and Yi Zhu (an American who represents China) made their way into Canada.
“With land travel, you can have all your documents ready — letters from our government and another government like the U.S., letters from your federation and Olympic committee, from me and Tracy (Wilson, who directs the skating program at the Cricket with Orser) and a quarantine plan — and you can state your case to a live person. Then the COVID task force will assess you,” he explained. “When you try to do this from an airport, you don’t even get to a task force. They are conditioned to say no, it’s not essential. It has been a bit frustrating. I know they would all prefer to be living and training here.”
Orser had worked with Evgenia Medvedeva in Toronto for two seasons, but the Russian star returned to Moscow in July, and has re-joined the camp of renowned coach Eteri Tutberidze. Orser believes the effects of the pandemic were “100 percent” responsible for Medvedeva’s move. “She has a visa that is different than her mother’s visa. There were no guarantees, but there was a better chance for her to come back … she was in Japan at the time,” said Orser. “But she didn’t want to travel here without her mom who is a big part of her day-to-day routine. So she decided to go back to Russia. We were doing classes regularly on FaceTime, but it was just getting too difficult for her, and that is why she made the move she did.”
For many of us, the pandemic has shifted the way we go about our daily tasks, and it is no different with coaches such as Orser and Wilson. With technology such as Zoom and FaceTime now available, they have been able to extend their instruction to all parts of the globe with virtual coaching. “I have done tons of it,” Orser said. “Tracy and I have a contract with the Chinese federation, so we have done quite a bit of work with them virtually by Zoom and it’s live. We are dealing with a 13-hour time difference, so it’s an early morning or late-night session, but it has been really well organized and manageable, with somebody following the skater on the ice, and a big screen so they can see any instructions or corrections.”
Orser has also had some of his skaters send videos for him to analyze. As well, he organizes ways for his international students to be part of group classes with skaters in Toronto, so they have a connection with their training mates. “I have been doing a lot of Zoom classes with them, or they send me videos and I will make an assessment and send back my comments. That is the best we can do,” he said. “We do a stroking class that is taped, and different exercises, and I will fire off to these guys some of the new exercises that we are doing. They get to see the whole class doing it, so they can have a sense of home and the team.”
Without doubt, it is a very different way of coaching, but Orser can see it being a bridge for the future beyond the end of the pandemic. He believes there are benefits to a hybrid of live and virtual coaching and said he has “actually learned a lot about working this way and it’s not bad. It is not as inconvenient as I thought it was going to be. You just kind of put things into words. And when I look to the future … Tracy and I do a lot of seminars at certain times of the year. So, if I do a seminar somewhere in the world, I can follow up a month later by doing a Zoom class with the group and sort of remind them of a few things. So that might be the way of the future.”