Sadovsky secures second men’s Olympic figure skating spot for Canada
Team Canada will have two figure skaters in the men’s singles event at Beijing 2022.
Roman Sadovsky’s result at the Nebelhorn Trophy in Oberstdorf, Germany on Friday earned Canada its second men’s entry. That stop of the ISU Challenger Series served as figure skating’s final Olympic qualifier and there were seven spots up for grabs in the men’s event.
Team Canada Beijing 2022 Qualification Tracker
The majority of Olympic quota spots (including 23 of the 30 men’s spots) were allocated based on results at the ISU World Championships in March. It was there that Keegan Messing‘s sixth-place finish locked up one men’s quota spot for Canada. His placement was high enough to make Canada eligible for two Olympic spots, but a country could not earn more spots than they had skaters in the free skate at the worlds. Canada had only qualified one man for the 2021 Worlds based on the results from the last world championships held in 2019.
READ: Team Canada secures Olympic figure skating entries for Beijing 2022
So it was left to Sadovsky, the 2020 Canadian champion, to compete for that second spot at the Nebelhorn Trophy. He had been in eighth place after the short program, but one of the skaters ranked ahead of him was not eligible to compete for an Olympic spot. So in the free skate, Sadovsky just needed to maintain his position.
Performing to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, Sadovsky fell on his opening quad Salchow and then put a hand down on his triple flip. But he was able to gather himself and keep fighting through his remaining jumps, his biggest mistake coming when he popped a planned triple lutz into a single. Combined with the scores he received for his program components, which took into account his outstanding skating skills and choreography and interpretation, Sadovsky did enough to secure the Olympic spot for Canada as he totalled 207.62 points and finished eighth overall.
‘’I didn’t think it would nearly as hard as what it was,’’ Sadovsky said in a Skate Canada release. ‘’I was training for this competition and I felt confident but once I stepped on the ice it hit really differently. I’m glad I got that Olympic spot and it’s out of the way.’’
‘’It would have been a little bit of a nightmare if I didn’t get the spot,’’ he added. ‘’I know I’d be beating myself up but I did what I had to do and I’m happy about it.’’
The other countries earning men’s Olympic spots in Oberstdorf were the United States, France, ROC, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and Australia. The event was won by American Vincent Zhou, who scored 284.23 to give the United States the third spot that he prevented them from claiming at the worlds when he failed to qualify for the free skate.
Who will fill Canada’s two men’s spots — as well as the three ice dance spots, two pairs spots, and one women’s singles spot earned at the world championships — will be determined by Skate Canada’s High Performance Committee following the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Ottawa on January 8.
Before that, you can watch Canadian figure skaters compete on the ISU Grand Prix series, starting with Skate America October 22-24 and followed the next week by Skate Canada International in Vancouver.
