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GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN — The timing is perfect.
Last week, Canadian figure skaters won three medals for the first time in 15 years at the world figure-skating championships. And there are still two years to go before the Vancouver Olympics.
Before Jeffrey Buttle won the gold medal in the men's event, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir took the silver in the dance event and Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison got the bronze in the pairs event, figure skating didn't figure highly in the medal potential for 2010.
That's all changed now.
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Buttle has to be considered a player now, particularly because he achieved the best technical marks in both the short and long programs last week without a quadruple jump. However, by Vancouver, both he and Patrick Chan, who finished ninth at his first world championship, will have to have one.
"The good thing is that is happened two years out from the Games," said Michael Slipchuk, the high-performance director for Skate Canada.
"It's great to have success this year," he said. "The confidence of here will not disappear."
But the competition is stiff at the top.
"It's not going to be a straight road," said William Thompson, the chief executive officer of Skate Canada. "We're still going to have some ups and downs along the way, but we're going in the right direction."
But now Canadian skaters have tasted success, and there's time to build on it, he said. There's nothing like a gold medal to do that.
"There is nothing better for a team to be there when you win a gold medal," Slipchuk said. "The success of the week has been amazing. Every medal is important, but when you get a chance to hear that anthem and to have a skater like Jeff Buttle … there couldn't be a more worthy person to be on top of that podium on the last day of worlds."
The second-line skaters, such as Chan, and a couple of the pairs teams will also have two years to get ready.
"I personally think they've got the ability to challenge down the road for the podium," Thompson said of Canadian champions Anabelle Langlois and Cody Hay as well as Meagan Duhamel and Craig Buntin.
Skate Canada will also help the current team prepare for the Vancouver Games by enlisting the help of the Olympians from the Calgary Games — Brian Orser, Liz Manley, Tracy Wilson and Kurt Browning — because they will face growing pressures on their home turf, Thompson said.
Last week, Canada qualified two men, two women, three pairs and two dance teams for the world championships next year in Los Angeles, an important event because it will be the qualifying event for the Vancouver Games.
Canada lost a dance team because, although Virtue and Moir won the silver medal, the next highest placement of Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (17th) wasn't enough to warrant three for next year. But they'll have one more year to change that.
"It's been a fantastic week for us," Thompson said. "We felt we were on track for a while, but to have it come together like it did this week, it was beyond our expectations. It will give a real jolt to the organization and hopefully generate public excitement."
After a few years in the doldrums, Skate Canada is finally finding its way back, too.
"We got a number of things wrong," Thompson said. "We got complacent.
"Yes, we have success now, but there will be no complacency. In my mind, we still have a long way to go. Until we have two people competing for medals in every discipline, we haven't achieved our goal."
Slipchuk said the fact Buttle won his gold medal with the top technical marks is proof that he's still building.
"The sport is so much about the confidence factor and seeing if you fit in," Slipchuk said. "When you come out and win a title, it's a positive. it's a defining moment for him. Not a lot of people gave him a shot. A lot of his competitors didn't give him a shot. They didn't see him coming.
"But the first day here, the way he was skating, we knew he was going to be definitely pushing that podium."
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