HAMILTON - Oops. False alarm.
You know that all-points bulletin that's been issued for anyone in Canada who could deliver a reasonable impersonation of a world contender after Elvis Stojko is gone? Cancel it.
They're right here. Maybe more than anyone thought.
High flyers. Huge jumpers. Kids over-rotating their triple Axels, lacking only the experience to know what to do about it. An astonishing talent named Emanuel Sandhu at age 17. Edmonton's Ben Ferreira at 18. Jayson Denommee and Collin Thompson at 20.
And somewhere out there, either sensing the need to expose these kids at an early age to the ultimate terror trip - the Olympics - or just failing to remember its own rules, is the Canadian Olympic Association, which threw the Canadian figure skating championships into an uproar here Thursday night.
COA president Carol Anne Letheren told CTV there is an option available by which the Canadian Figure Skating Association need not send Jeff Langdon to Nagano as Elvis Stojko's backup band if it thinks there's someone better. All along, the CFSA has been operating on what it thought was a well-understood, negotiated system of qualifying under which Langdon - the second-ranked male in the land; ninth in the world last March, is the only other Canadian male skater besides Stojko to have accumulated the necessary points over the past two competitive seasons. But if someone finished ahead of Langdon, the CFSA thought, it could lobby the COA to have a third skater on the team since the International Skating Union rules permit a third male for Canada.
Now, apparently, that's all off.
"I don't understand it. They've changed the rules in the middle of the game. I've been trying to phone Ottawa, but all the lines are down," CFSA director general David Dore said Thursday night, while Langdon, 22, was gamely hanging on to second in the men's short program behind the peerless Stojko, but with all those kids breathing down his neck.
The men's championship, going in, was viewed as a non-competition - and ofcourse, the race for first still is.
On what would have been - or maybe was, for all we know - Elvis Presley's 63rd birthday, his namesake rocked the house at Copps Coliseum with a near-perfect, physically-draining short program to a Japanese drum beat that drew one mark of 6.0 on the technical line, and just about solid 5.9s everywhere else.
"I've had three 6.0s in this building," said Stojko, "and even though I focus so hard on my own thing, once in a while it feels good to see that reward up there -especially as a sendoff to Japan."
It wasn't quite the seven 6.0s Michelle Kwan got Thursday at the U.S.Nationals, but Elvis isn't a scorekeeper.
"I don't usually get into the numbers thing, but I do strive for excellence,"Stojko said. "And today was the best I could do, and I hope to do things even cleaner in Japan."
And if he does, can anybody beat him?
"Well,"said Stojko, pausing a good 20 seconds while he squirmed with that one. "I'm not one to say I can't be beaten, but maybe if I do everything I can do, with a little magic and I cross my fingers, maybe it will come true."
One sure thing: the field here can't beat him - and probably never will. But there are kids in the wings, for whenever he decides to hang 'em up.
Sandhu, with a remarkable package of skills and artistry in his first year of seniors, could be one solid long program from making a very sticky problem for the CFSA, and doesn't seem the least fazed by the possibility.
"Sure, I can," he said. "I'll fight to get it. I've kind of tumbled that around in my mind a little bit, but if I focus on that, I'll probably try too hard."
"But he's good - good under pressure," said his coach, Joanne McLeod.
Ferreira, who's also progressed remarkably and is a much more complete skater now than when he finished seventh in his first crack at the seniors last year, stands eighth behind Royal Glenora clubmate Ravi Walia, 24, who has a quad-triple combination in his long program that took the judges by surprise at Skate Canada last fall.
"Most of them didn't even realize it was a quad," said Walia. "But they know now."
Ferreira who gets immense height on his jumps - as do Thompson and Denommee - just missed his opening triple Axel and over-rotated his double Axel at the end, while Walia didn't make his Axel combination and also fell on a routine (for him)Lutz.
"Cynthia (coach Ullmark) said it would have been so much easier for the judges if you'd only made the one mistake," said Walia. "I said it would have been a lot easier on me, too."
Whether either of the Edmonton skaters can make the big move upward "depends totally on what everybody else does," said Walia."I feel pretty in control of myself," Ferreira said. "I'd love a top-five finish because that would be senior national team, but that's out of my hands. I have to do my job first."
They both do, and a lot has to happen to those above them.
But for Sandhu and Denommee, for Thompson and Ferreira and a stable of kids who have been more or less written off as part of Canadian skating's missing generation, Thursday's performances - and the off-ice bombshell from the COA - put a little adrenaline into the weekend.
The championships just got interesting.