HIGH ACHIEVERS: Figure skaters Katie Xu, Michael Raytchev, Jack Fan strike gold at Special Olympics Canada Winter Games

By Martin Cleary

The Ottawa figure skating community has produced an enviable list of Canadian women’s senior singles champions over the past nine decades.

The impressive list of athletes has combined to win 16 national titles – Barbara Ann Scott (four), Linda Carbonetto (one), Lynn Nightingale (four), Janet Morrissey (one), Elizabeth Manley (three), Angela Derochie (one) and Alaine Chartrand (two).

Well, the time has come to add another skater to that accomplished group. Please welcome, Katie Xu, who won her third consecutive national women’s singles championship at the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games last weekend in Calgary.

While Xu’s level of skating may not equal those of the other elite athletes, she is powered by the same level of determination, dedication and enthusiasm in her pursuit of excellence.

And she already has a rink named in her honour. In 2018, the CardelRec Recreation Complex’s Rink A was named the Katie Xu and Jack Fan Rink, after the Goulbourn Skating Club members won gold medals at the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games.

Only two other Ottawa ice surfaces bear the names of highly-acclaimed local female figure skaters – the Barbara Ann Scott Arena and the Elizabeth Manley International Rink.

Competing in her third Special Olympics Canada Winter Games, Xu, 25, was a double gold medallist, winning the Level 4 women’s singles and Level 2 couples dance titles with Fan. She also was fourth in Level 2 ice dance singles.

By winning two gold medals, Xu has now captured a career total of six gold and two bronze medals at the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games. Besides earning her first two Level 2 and Level 3 singles gold medals in Corner Brook (2016) and Thunder Bay (2020) respectively, she also has collected first-place results at the last two Games in Level 1 and Level 2 couples dance. Her bronze-medal efforts came in solo dance at Level 1 in Corner Brook and Level 2 in Thunder Bay.

Goulbourn Skating Club teammate Michael Raytchev and Jack Fan also had golden and multiple-medal performances at the Games in Calgary.

Raytchev won the men’s Level 4 singles competition as well as the Level 1 ice dance singles. Fan was a triple-medal winner, earning one of each colour – gold with Xu in Level 2 couples dance, silver in Level 2 ice dance singles and bronze in Level 5 singles.

Erin Arbuckle of Ottawa tied for second place in Level 2 singles with Quebec’s Jade Charriere and earned a silver medal.

Canada is expected to send a team to the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Italy and skaters like Xu, Raytchev, Fan and Arbuckle will be considered for the team. The team, which will be selected from the seven sports at the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Calgary, could be smaller than previous years because of a lack of sponsorship funding in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was really happy to perform my (singles) program,” Xu said in a phone interview this week. “I tried to do my best and I was really happy. It was the best of my season.

“My program was great and better than last year, when I was second (in the Team Ontario qualifying competition). It was really great and fun with the team support and with my coach Cathy (Skinner).”

Xu, an Algonquin College computer student who works at the Independent grocery store in Stittsville, has been training with Skinner for the past 16 years and practises twice a week at the rink named in her honour.

“She did great,” Skinner said about Xu. “She basically did the best she could do. The competition was really close and we had to wait because they didn’t show the marks. We had to wait until the results were posted.

“When Katie saw the results, she came running out saying: ‘We did it, one-two-three.’ Team Ontario won the top three places.”

Xu’s two-minute singles program was filled with a variety of elements, including flip, loop, Salchow and toe-loop jumps, a waltz jump-toe loop combination, camel and back spins, and spiral and turn sequences.

“I was really pleased,” Skinner added. “She skated with more confidence and that’s what you like to see. She knew she could do what she does in practice and she went out and did that.”

Skinner also was thrilled to see Raytchev perform well and win another gold medal in his unblemished career.

“He floored me. He has never lost a competition and he keeps moving up (levels),” Skinner said.

Raytchev was happy with his singles skating, even though he slightly stumbled on his best element, the sit spin.

“It (winning two gold medals) felt unreal,” he said in a phone interview. “It felt great to win the medals and have people support me and congratulate me.”

He also won two gold medals at the 2020 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Thunder Bay and another gold at the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, AB.

“Honestly, it felt good,” added Raytchev, who is a second-year Algonquin College student in the game development program. “I only stumbled once. Something happened and I wasn’t centred (over the spin) properly, I lost my balance and stopped early. But I did super well with the other elements.”

Team Ontario athletes produced the most medals at the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games, winning a total of 209 (72 gold, 67 silver and 70 bronze).

While the Goulbourn Skating Club figure skaters won four gold, two silver and one bronze medals, the Ottawa snowshoeing contingent charged hard and collected five gold, three silver and two bronze.

Ottawa athletes competed in five of the seven sports and earned a total of 10 gold, six silver and four bronze medals.

Gaerrisen Freeland was unstoppable as a snowshoe sprinter, winning gold in the boys’ Level 8 100 metres in 14.91 seconds, Level 6 200 metres in 32:34.9 seconds, Level 6 400 metres in 1:18.87 and the Level 4 4×100-metre relay.

Kevin Dooks was a triple medallist with gold medals in the Level 10 200 metres in 1:15.949 and the 400 metres in 3:12.174 as well as the Level 6 800 metres in 6:33.021.

Calum MacKenzie earned the Level 9 400-metre silver medal with a time of 2:24.046 and a bronze in the Level 5 1,600 metres in 10:14.099.

In cross-country skiing, Jake Riseborough of Ottawa was a double Level 4 medallist, taking gold in the 1,000-metre classical race in 10:57.60, and bronze in the 2,500 metres in 41:22.90.

The curling team of Patrick Gratton, Stephan Groulx, Kimberly Gorin, Conall MacMillan and Ryan Smith posted a 6-4 record and won the silver medal in the Wild Rose Division.

Tara St. Arnaud of Ottawa tied for second place and was awarded a silver medal in 5-pin bowling’s Level 5 individual singles competition. She had a total pin score of 1,071.

Frances Brazeau of Ottawa was fourth in Level 3 bowling at 930 pins, which was only four pins out of third place, while Ottawa’s Marko Blazevic was eighth in Level 8 singles at 1,026.

Competing in the Chinook-Arches Division, Blazevic, St. Arnaud, Brazeau, Jessica Neal of Smiths Falls and Robert Reid of Renfrew took Ontario to a fourth-place result with 4,863 pins.

In the individual singles competition, Neal was third in Level 6 at 1,102, which was one pin away from the silver, and Reid took third in Level 2 at 734 pins.