It took a photo finish to determine first and second place Saturday at the B.C./Yukon section figure skating championship, but Beres Clements and Ehren Chang are right where they want to be.
Hometown hopeful Justin Hampole is still in the hunt for a berth in the 2015 Canada Winter Games after a third-place finish Saturday in the pre-novice competition at Kin 1, but he's going to step up his game in his final competition of the year to dislodge Clements and Chang.
Sitting first after Friday's short program, Clements fell early in his free skate trying to land a triple Salchow and had more slip in his double-Lutz, double-loop combination, but that resulted in just minor deductions and the 13-year-old Connaught Figure Skating Club member from Richmond hung on to win the competition by one-hundredth of a point over Chang.
Clements finished with 82.56 points, just ahead of Chang's 82.55 total, while Hampole was third with 78.31.
"I was really happy and really surprised because I wasn't sure what Ehren's score was," said Clements, who turned 13 on Friday. "My first jump [double-Axel, double-toe] was really good, but then the triple-Sal was a bit sloppy and then I finally did all my spins. My double-Lutz, double-loop was again a little sloppy but in the rest of the program I was just really determined."
The thought of returning in February for Canada Games has Clements excited. He knows he has just one more competition ahead of him -- the Skate Canada Challenge Dec. 3-7 in Montreal -- to prove he belongs on the Games team.
"I just have to concentrate and focus and keep working hard," he said. "I'm not familiar with any of the other skaters so it will be really interesting to see what happens. I love skating here because it's big and bright and it's bigger, so you feel like you're the only one out there."
Clements, Chang and Hampole have been jostling for top position all year in the pre-novice category and have each finished on top of medal podium. Hampole won the B.C. Winter Games in Mission and SummerSkate in Burnaby, while Chang won the Autumn Leaves competition in Kamloops three weeks ago. It was Clements's turn to take the spotlight Saturday.
"He's a great competitor," said Eileen Murphy, Clements's coach at the Connaught Skating Centre in Richmond. "At this level the big jumps are there and he's taking a couple risk elements but he was smart enough to compose himself and when he lost something he got back on track. He got done what he needed to get done."
Chang, 14, who skates for the Killarney club of Vancouver, was virtually tied with Clements after the short program, trailing by a mere eight-hundredths of a point. For Chang, not being the leader took some of the pressure off and he came out Saturday with a smooth performance with only a few flaws in the spins and one under-rotated double-Axel.
"That was one of the best long programs I've done," said Chang. "I really focused on trying to connect to the audience and it felt good when I was on the ice. Sometimes being second after the short isn't that bad because you have a goal and you have someone you have to beat. Sometimes when you're first you get a little scared trying to protect your lead."
Hampole's hopes of winning on home ice came to a crashing halt as a result of his under-rotated double-Axel halfway through Friday's short program. That left him six points behind Clements and Chang heading into the free skate. Hampole won the free skate with a total of 51.17, ahead of Chang (50.35) and Clements (49.44), but it wasn't enough for the Northern BC Centre for Skating veteran to dislodge them in the overall standings.
Although both his double-Axels in the long program were under-rotated the landings weren't out of step enough to upset Hampole's balance. Unlike his double-Axel was in the short program, which put him too far behind.
"I was happy with my double-Axels, I landed them both and did one with a double-toe in it," said the 13-year-old Hampole. "My combo jumps were pretty good and I thought my spins were pretty good too. I thought I performed pretty well.
'The fall on the double-Axel short brought down my points a lot. I got lots of pluses on every element except my double-Axel, so I was happy about that."
Competing in front of a home crowd, Hampole was feeling nervous and didn't have a good warmup Saturday, which was noticeable to his club coaches, Andrea Ludditt and Rory Allen. But Hampole redeemed himself with his strongest performance of the year, which left him with a new personal best score.
"He totally came out and owned it today," said Ludditt. "To go out and warm up poorly and then skate so string is very telling of his character."
Ludditt and Allen know they have to pull out all the stops to speed Hampole's progress in the next month before the Skate Canada Challenge. They know he's good enough to be the top skater in the province if he lands his double-Axels better than he did at the section meet and they also realize he probably has to add a triple jump to his competition tool kit. Hampole has been getting comfortable with his triple loop in practice and while it's risky to change his program with only a month to prepare, that might be the way to go.
"It would be really nice to go to Montreal with triple," said Ludditt. "Even if it's turned three times and he falls, the base [point] value is worth it. It has to be a focus on Rory and myself and Justin to start turning triples so it's not a foreign concept and a scary feeling. It just becomes part of his training and that may be where we focus."
