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Jeremy Ten named as the Athlete Ambassador for Skate Canada International in Lethbridge

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OTTAWA, ON: Three-time Canadian medallist Jeremy Ten, 26, Vancouver, B.C., will return to the rink but in a new role. Ten will act as the Athlete Ambassador for the 2015 Skate Canada International taking place in Lethbridge, Alta., from October 29 – November 1, 2015 at the ENMAX Centre.

Over the course of the four-day event Ten will handle speaking engagements, media interviews, making appearances on behalf of the competing athletes, choreographing the gala group numbers and making time for his fans. He will also act as a guest judge at the Flower Retriever Auditions in Lethbridge on September 10, 2015 at the ENMAX Centre. Ten will be available for interviews during his visit.

“I am so honored and grateful to be attending the 2015 Skate Canada International as the Athlete Ambassador in Lethbridge, Alberta. Skate Canada was always one of my favorite competitions to compete in on the Grand Prix circuit thanks to the amazing volunteers, the incredibly supportive Canadian crowd, and the fans from all over the world that make our sport so great,” said Ten. “I look forward to meeting and interacting with the fans, engaging the community, and cheering on my former team mates as they take on some of skating’s best.”

“The role of Athlete Ambassador at our events is a great way for our alumni to stay connected to the sport and it also allows fans to interact with some of their favourite skaters. We are thrilled to have Jeremy in this role,” said Dan Thompson, Skate Canada CEO. “Having skated at this event three times previously in his career Jeremy has a vast knowledge of what it takes to compete at this level. We look forward to welcoming him to Lethbridge.” Ten has competed internationally for Canada for 11 years. He is a three-time national team member, two-time world team member in 2009 and 2015, and is also a two-time Canadian junior medallist, winning the junior Canadian title in 2007. He has competed at Skate Canada International three times in his career (2009, 2010, 2011).

Since his retirement in June 2015 he has taken his very first steps into independent adulthood and moved into his very own apartment, has been assisting and directing skating seminars and workshops, guest coaching at various skating clubs in B.C. and Alberta, choreographing, and working on his NCCP Level 3 coaching certification; all while maintaining two part-time jobs. Ten is also a recent graduate of Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Arts in Health Sciences and minor in Kinesiology.

TICKETS

All-event ticket packages are on sale now! Ticket packages range from $150-$180, plus applicable surcharges.

Single event tickets will go on sale on Thursday, September 10 at 10:00 a.m. (MT). Single tickets range from $15-$55, plus applicable surcharges. Children 12 and under are free to attend on Thursday for the practice sessions. Family four-packs are also available and range in cost from $125-$200, plus applicable surcharges.

Tickets can be purchased online at www.enmaxcentre.ca, by phone at 403.329.7328, or in person at the ENMAX Centre Box Office. Group discounts are also available for groups of 10 or more by calling 403.320.4225.

WHO TO WATCH

Fans in Lethbridge are in for an exciting event as Canadian favourites like Patrick Chan, Meagan Duhamel, Eric Radford, Kaitlyn Weaver, Andrew Poje, Nam Nguyen, Gabrielle Daleman and Kaetlyn Osmond highlight the fields. They will be joined by a number of world-class skaters including Yuzuru Hanyu, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev.

EVENT INFO

Skate Canada International is the second competition in the annual ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating series. The other events take place in the United States (Skate America), China (Cup of China), France (Trophée Eric Bompard), Russia (Rostelecom Cup), and Japan (NHK Trophy).

Skaters are awarded points based on their placements in the series’ events. The top-six men and ladies and the top-six pair and ice dance teams qualify for the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final to be held in Barcelona, Spain from December 10-13, 2015.

Jeremy Ten on his own terms

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Click click. Click. Click…Send.

And with that, listening to the sound of the ocean on vacation in Mexico with his skating friends, Jeremy Ten finally wrote the end to his competitive skating career, telling Skate Canada by email that he was ending his miraculous final season on a high note.

Yes, Ten has retired, after a marvelous season in which he exceeded all expectations. Contemplating retirement a year earlier after missing the Sochi Olympic team, Ten finally decided to take one more year to skate the way he wanted to with certain goals: to get a quad in his arsenal, to get a Grand Prix (he got two) and to show up at nationals in front of noisy Canadian fans, attack his programs and skate with his heart on his sleeve. And he did.

But the season went so well – he earned the Canadian silver medal and a trip to the his second world championships after a five-year hiatus, and to the World Team Trophy, an event he had always wanted to do – that he felt the urge to continue, do more of this.

“There was a part of me that said: ‘Oh just do one more year, really have fun with it, keep going,’” Ten said. And then he thought about the welfare of his 26-year-old body. And reason reigned.

“I thought about the state of my physical being,” Ten said. “I just knew it wouldn’t work. Trying to learn a quad at my age, when you’re competing against kids who have been doing it since they were 17 or 18, and didn’t have to go through injuries, it takes a toll.”

Ten did get his quad at a stately age, during this past season (delayed because of a few seasons of serious injuries) and it came far more easily than his triple Axel. In fact, it was a lovely one, and he could do it with a triple toe loop in practice. But doing it in a competition setting was another story. During the six-minute warm-ups for Nationals, Four Continents and World Championships, he took hard falls to his left hip while attempting the quad. Always that left hip.

The jump was still new, and the smallest detail could throw it off kilter. Throw in a little adrenalin and a pumping heart in a compressed time frame of a warmup and down he went. While training the quad, he had never fallen like that.

“It’s one of those falls where you land sideways on your blade and you don’t know where you are, and you come down and you smack your hip on the ice,” he said. “As the season progressed, it was starting to bother me more and more.”

After a hard fall in the warm-up for the long program at Nationals, coach Joanne McLeod came up to Ten and told him: ‘We went to Autumn Classic without a quad and you did great there. I don’t think you should do it here.”

But Ten had trained all season to get that quad and he wanted to stick to the plan. He fell on it during the long program. Still, his performance was a triumph. When his marks came up, he saw that he was second in the free, and then he saw that he was first overall (with Nam Nguyen still to skate). “I thought I misheard it,” he said. “And then I saw the screen and then I just dropped everything. I think I threw my water bottle at one point.” McLeod burst into tears into his chest. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” she said. Their reaction to Ten’s achievement was some of the best theatre of the event.

Ten’s best attempt at landing the quad was at NHK Trophy in Japan. At worlds and Four Continents the warm-up falls on the quad bothered him more. And he started to feel the wear and tear on his body. “I do want to walk in the near future,” he said. “I don’t want to get hip surgery before I’m 30.”

And the falls rattled him a bit, especially at the World Championships, because it was such an important event. He took out the quad for World Team Trophy, an event he said was “the funnest competition I’ve ever done.”

His short program – clean – at the World Championships in Shanghai was a triumph. “This whole season was about me trying to live out my potential and I feel that going to worlds and skating that short program was it for me,” Ten said. “I feel like I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to do. And that made it easier.”

Just because Ten is leaving behind his competitive career doesn’t mean he will be standing still. On Friday, June 12, Ten graduated from Simon Fraser University with a degree in health sciences and a minor in kinesiology.

He’s currently dabbling in choreography, with hopes his career will head in that direction. He feels music and enjoys it and his forte was his artistic side. Ten is also coaching on the side, doing clinics, workshops and seminars. Last weekend, he did a seminar for the Alberta Provincial Team. A few weeks ago, he did another one in Canmore, Alta. and before that, he travelled to New Brunswick to offer up his knowledge there. He’s trying to book some shows, too.

“It’s time to grow up,” he said. He leaves the competitive side of the sport with no regrets now. He feels that he’s in a happy place and has a lot of opportunities coming his way. “I feel like I’m leaving the sport because it’s my choice and not because I’m being pushed out of the sport,” he said.

Canadian Silver Medallist Jeremy Ten Retires from Competitive Skating

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OTTAWA, ON: Three-time Canadian medallist Jeremy Ten, 26, Vancouver, B.C., announced his retirement from competitive skating today. Ten has competed internationally for Canada for 11 years. He is a three-time national team member, two-time world team member in 2009 and 2015, and is also a two-time Canadian junior medallist, winning the junior Canadian title in 2007.

“It was an honour and privilege this past season to represent Canada at my second world championships as the reigning Canadian silver medallist. I would like to thank Skate Canada for all their support and for giving me the opportunity to compete on the international stage for the last 11 years,” said Ten. “I couldn’t be more grateful for all the life experiences you can only learn while travelling the world, competing against the best in the world, and being a Canadian athlete.”

“Jeremy has been a big part of the Canadian skating scene for over a decade including representing Canada at two world championships,” said Mike Slipchuk, Skate Canada High Performance Director. “Skate Canada wishes Jeremy the best of luck in his next chapter and we look forward to seeing him staying involved in other capacities.”

Today Ten graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Arts in Health Sciences and minor in Kinesiology. Ten plans on staying involved in the sport as much as possible by exploring his options as a coach, focusing on choreography, as well as possibly getting involved in judging as a caller.

Jeremy Ten brings Hallelujah to the ice for a powerful and emotional last season

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When he bustles through his final competitive season in the coming months, Jeremy Ten will stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on his tongue but Hallelujah.

Music matters to Ten. And his musical choice for the long program this season is epic; it’s Leonard Cohen’s heart-clutching Hallelujah, music that gets under your skin.

His final season was born of a difficult decision. After two national bronze medals, and nary a trip to the Olympics, Ten had to ponder his future very carefully. He missed the Vancouver Olympics when he was off ice for months because of a bone impingement problem. Then he suffered a spiral fracture of his left tibia in a freak fall. He gathered his forces last year for the run-up to Sochi, and had a wonderful run, with his first international medal (bronze at Nebelhorn), two clean short programs on international ice, and some personal bests. It had taken him two years to get to that heady point. But he finished sixth at the Canadian championships and missed the Russia pilgrimage.  What was a 25-year-old guy to do?

At a meeting last summer with Ted Barton, the head of the British Columbia/Yukon Skate Canada section – before Ten even began to train again – was the clincher. “When you look into the future, do you feel that skating one more time in front of a Canadian audience at the national championships is worth it to you – to have the adrenalin, to have that feeling, knowing that as you age, you’ve never going to have that again?” Barton asked him.

That was enough to convince Ten that he felt it was worth it, that he wanted that one last performance. It won’t matter if he doesn’t have a great skate at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Kingston, Ont., come January. All that matters, Ten said, was to enjoy the moment. “All those nationals leading up to this have been about trying to go to an Olympics, or trying to go to worlds, and the pressure to be the top three in Canada,” Ten said. “But for me, this time, I just get to go and enjoy it.”

Ten was asked: “What if you were to win nationals this year and get to go to worlds? What do you do then?” Ten said nothing will change. This is his last season.

His goal this season, he says, is not about placement, but to be the best he can be. He’ll do it for himself. It’s not going to be a timid swan song. He wants to land a quad. He’s never done it before, but he quipped: “An old dog can learn new tricks.” This past summer, he’s been landing quad after quad. Once – and it’s on video – he landed a quad toe loop – triple toe loop. “It feels like such a great jump,” he said. Gone is the worry about risking injury. He finds the jump feels natural – more so than the triple Axel, which he has been doing for years. He started landing them three days after he started to work on them this summer.

Ten had a late start, getting back to training. He’s using his short program music from last season: Dance With Me Wallis, a melancholic piece by Abel Zorzeniowski. It’s a calming piece of music for Ten, who did some of the choreography himself.

The long program choice was terribly important, as his final note to the world. Coach Joanne McLeod recommended K.D. Lang’s version of Hallelujah. Who doesn’t remember Lang in her white suit, singing the song at the Vancouver Olympic closing ceremonies? Ten wasn’t there live, but he’d seen it. And he felt the music’s immensity. At first, he didn’t want to do it. “I thought, oh my gosh, this is such an iconic piece that resonates with so many people, especially in Canada,” Ten said. “For a while, I sat on it, and thought there is no way I can pull this off. It’s so big.”

A friend changed his perspective. “Think of it this way,” the friend said. “‘Titanic’ is an iconic piece. ‘Carmen’ is an iconic piece.” Why should ‘Hallelujah’ be any different?”

So Hallelujah it was. Guaranteed, nobody else has ever skated to it, especially a version with vocals, new this year.

But Jeremy Ten being Jeremy Ten, searched out the music he would use. One day in July, he tweeted a question: your favourite version of the Cohen song? By the end of the day, the top three were K.D. Lang, the late Jeff Buckley and Jason Castro, a charming, dreadlocked contestant on American Idol.

Ten found the beautiful version by Buckley and knew it was right for him. Buckley’s interpretation of it was more introspective and quieter than that of K.D. Lang. After all, he’s been called one of the best songsters of his generation: “a pure drop in an ocean of noise,” Bono once said.

For starters, the Buckley version starts with a breath or a sigh. Beautiful. Then it goes into an instrumental arrangement that Ten uses to get his triple Axel and quad out of the way without distraction. Then the words come (When K.D. Lang was introduced on stage at the Olympics, the emcee called it a song of peace, but it is anything but). The instrumental version returns for Ten’s footwork and then the piece ends with two beautiful, powerful Hallelujahs. It will be memorable, and it’s a clever used of instrumental intertwined with vocals.

“It’s quite something,” Ten said.

Into the rink, Ten will trail the essence of Buckley, whose voice is touched by melancholy. He was the son of renowned U.S. folk singer Tim Buckley, who separated from his mother early on: Buckley died of a drug overdose at age 28, within months of having met his son as a 7-year-old. Jeff and his mother weren’t invited to the funeral. Jeff Buckley released only one album, and was just preparing another when he drowned at age 31 in 1997.

This season, Ten will unleash this gem at the 2014 Autumn Classic International in Barrie, Ontario in October and at Cup of Russia. Getting that Grand Prix assignment was epic, too. “It was a shock,” Ten said.

Ten was visiting friends Asher Hill and Kharis Ralph, the threesome strolling down a street in Toronto, when Ten was alerted by a tweet: “Congratulations on getting Cup of Russia.” Ten stopped dead in his tracks as his friends kept walking. “I got Cup of Russia!” Ten yelled. The three of them started screaming in the street. “It was this great feeling that all the hard work I had done last season really translated into this season,” he said. “the fact that I got a Grand Prix on my own – and didn’t have to go through Skate Canada to get it, was a nice feeling.”

It feels like it’s the right thing to do, Ten concludes about his final-season journey. “It feels like it’s my time,” he said. “I’ve just been enjoying skating, good or bad. I’m just out on the ice, loving it.”

Jeremy Ten follows the music for the 2013-2014 season

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The name runs across the tongue of the 24-year-old Vancouver skater with as much ease as if he were uttering: “backward outside death spiral” or “flying camel spin” or “mashed potatoes with garlic bits.” Music is Ten’s lakeside cottage, his refuge, his favourite place. He’s always connected to his music, always listening. Music follows Ten everywhere. Ten follows music.

That’s why it should come as no surprise that Ten, to a large degree, has taken charge of the music that he will use when he competes at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships next month in Ottawa, in a bid to make the Olympic team. He’s very serious about that goal, indeed, and he’s taking full responsibility for his route there. There are three spots up for the taking. Most people figure three-time world champion Patrick Chan and quad maestro Kevin Reynolds have a lock on the first two. But the scramble is for that third spot, and Ten wants it as much as anybody.

Ten’s short program? He found the music for it. Ten went looking for music scores written by Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski. Who wouldn’t? But seriously, Ten knew the name from the music he used for a short program during the 2010-11 season, when Buttle had choreographed for him. The music back then? Part of the soundtrack from the movie A Single Man. It’s not your garden variety sort of music for a short program. Like Naqoyqats, it’s introspective. Not that easy for a skater to carry off. You need Buttle-like sensitivities for Korzeniowski.

Korzeniowski puts a stamp on anything he writes. His music is bittersweet, melancholic, deeply emotional, and full of breathtaking beauty. He uses repetitive phrases to good effect. Melody is important to him. Classically trained, he pays attention to every note. He’s not the sort of guy who will throw together a basic tune, load magnificent orchestrations on top of it and call it a day. His music is minimalistic, memorable in its powerful simplicity.

So this is the direction that Ten took when he picked out a score written by Korzeniowski for the Madonna-backed movie W.E., about a women who idealizes what she thought was the perfect love between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, who abdicated the British throne to marry a divorcee.

“I found this soundtrack and kept listening to two pieces off it and they were both mesmerizing and just really captured everything I wanted to emote as a skater,” Ten said. The track he picked? Dance With Me Wallis.

The feeling of the short is “very hopeful, passionate,” Ten said. “It is very avant garde. It’s kind of calming at the same time….it’s really up my alley.”

Coach Joanne McLeod found the music for Ten’s long program when she undertook a journey through a closet and found a pile of old CDs, some of which she had forgotten about, including Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Variations. She asked Ten to give it a listen. He did on the way home from the rink and immediately fell in love with it. This music offers a more dramatic, theatrical direction, maybe even a little over the top, totally different from the short. Ten says he’s had nothing but good feedback for both programs.

The feedback is even more gratifying, because this time, Ten did not go to the court of Buttle or another of his favourite choreographers, David Wilson to design either of these routines. Instead, Ten did some of it himself, with help from McLeod and dance coach Megan Wing. “It was a unique experience for me to have more of a say in what I wanted to put in or what I wanted to do,” Ten said.

Armed with these programs, Ten has had a good year, finishing third at Nebelhorn Trophy in September, to earn the first international medal of his career, which has been interrupted by injury. “Better late than never,” Ten would say.

He feels like he’s the underdog going into the Canadian championships, although he signalled his intent by winning the short program at the Challenge competition in early December in Regina. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in the hot seat,” he said. That may have thrown him off a little, when he faltered, went back to some old habits and finished fourth overall after the long. But it was a snap, like a dunk of cold water just when he needed it most, perhaps.

“You’ve got to go through that,” said Ten, who feels that he’s a better competitor than he’s been in the past. He doesn’t let small things bother him so much, he said. He has taken more control of his body and his mind.

“I’m the one that’s chasing and attacking for that final spot to the Olympic Games,” he said. “I feel that I have all the tools that are required to make the Olympic team. I’ve been working so hard. I’ve been competing so much better. It’s just keeping that confidence, keeping my head up, and not overthinking things. I’m going to make the most of it.”

Beverley Smith