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Sandhu fails to make cut
After blowing his short program at the world figure skating championships Tuesday, a thought flashed through his mind when he learned he'd failed to make the cut for the men's free-skating final after finishing 29th among 30 competitors.
"I wish I could do it all over again," he said.
But it doesn't work that way.
The 17-year-old skater from Richmond Hill, Ont., is finished for the season.
Left to look somewhat shortsighted in retrospect are all those who rose in indignation and insisted Sandhu should have been added to Canada's Olympic team after his second-place finish to Elvis Stojko at the Candian championships in January.
The truth is, one good performance does not a world champion make, and Sandhu now has proved as much all by himself.
"I definitely wasn't expecting to be in this situation," he admitted as he glumly dissected his downfall.
He fell on his first jump. That cost him the triple Axel-double toe loop combination that was required. Big deduction on the judges' cards. He doubled out on a scheduled triple Lutz. Another big deduction.
His music ran two seconds over the limit of two minutes 40 seconds, so the excellent spin he did at the end did not count. The music mistake might just have been the difference between making or missing the cut.
The judges always hit newcomers hard when they mess up and Sandhu was no exception.
Technical merit marks (out of 6.0): 3.8, 3.8, 3.5, 3.7, 3.4, 3.5, 3.4, 3.5, 3.4.
Artistic impression marks: 4.8, 4.9, 5.1, 5.1, 5.0, 4.7, 4.7, 4.6, 4.7.
Game over.
Jaws on the faces of the hundreds of Canadian fans in the crowd dropped. They hadn't expected this -- not from a rookie touted back home as a can't-miss prospect.
The top 24 among 30 advanced to the final. The only competitor Sandhu finished ahead of was South Korean Kyu-Hyun Lee, who placed 24th at '98 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
Jeffrey Langdon of Barrie, Ont., fared much better, finishing eighth.
Russians Alexei Yagudin and Evgeni Plushenko were 1-2. Americans Michael Weiss and Todd Eldredge finished third and fourth, respectively.
Now, for the really bad news: Canada's allotment in the men's event next year will be reduced to one if Langdon finishes worse than sixth overall tonight.
CFSA director general David Dore is bracing himself for the worst.
"That hurts a lot," he said of the inevitability now of Canada getting only one man and one woman in singles in Helsinki. "That was not in our plans."
Joanne McLeod, Sandhu's coach, cringed as she watched him make mistake after mistake.
"This would be his weakest short program ever," she said. "He missed a lot out there."
She added that "a few things with his body are bothering him, but he wants to keep them to himself.
"We're not going to comment further on it. Parts of your body ache sometimes qnd that's just part of being an athlete."
Sandhu insisted his self confidence hasn't been deeply dented.
"There are some times when you're perfect and sometimes when you're not," he said. "Nobody is perfect.
"This time, I wasn't perfect.
"I'll use this as a learning experience. It's not something I'll dwell on. I know I can skate a lot better."
Skating fans will have to wait until next fall now to see if Sandhu is Canada's skater of the future as he, his coach, and the Canadian Figure Skating Association have said.