Word: boitano
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Last month Leaver announced that Boitano would not try the jump for which he is best known, the quadruple toe loop, at the Olympics. Never performed successfully in competition, the quad has become the slippery grail of skating. Boitano practices it daily and hits almost 100% of the time. But in competition, he has thrown it -- and blown it -- four times, most noticeably at the 1987 world championship. Leaver sees little point in risking another disaster when Boitano already has what is considered the most technically difficult program ever and can score 6.0s without the quad. Boitano finds...
...whether he triumphs or stumbles. Although he has had a lock on the Canadian title for eight years, he has often been an also-ran at the international level. After taking the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, just behind America's Scott Hamilton and three places ahead of Boitano, Orser placed second in three successive world championships. Last year he took the title...
...full-support approach has bolstered the athlete's confidence. The Boitano challenge? "If we both did a perfect program, I'd come out ahead," he says positively. Orser & Co. are leaving nothing to chance. Workouts run to eight hours a day, six days a week. Recently, the entire Canadian figure- skating team rented Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens and simulated Olympic conditions, including the actual announcer who will be in Calgary. "Now in my , practice, I can visualize how I'm going to feel in the Saddledome," says Orser. "I can picture the audience, all of the sounds, everything...
...rest heavily on Penetanguishene's favorite son (that's in Ontario). But Orser seems to relish his position. "I'm in the driver's seat going in," he says, "so all eyes and expectations will be on me. That's the way I want it to be." Other than Boitano, the only tough competition is likely to come from Alexander Fadeev, the Soviet skater who won the 1985 world title and has placed third ever since...
Despite competitive tensions, the two Brians are friends off the ice. Since first crossing blades at the 1978 junior world championship in France, they have developed a genuine warmth for each other, built on shared interests, common pressures and gentle mutual needling. When Orser turned 26 in December, Boitano sent a card that read, "You are just like a ripe, vintage wine. Old." Both men know not to push the friendship where it cannot go. "We never talk skating," says Boitano. "The program is taboo...