1996 Canadian nationals - Women’s free skate

[briancoogaert]

1996 Canadians Ladies : clearly not the best competition ever !
It's the first time I see this competition, and I'm very happy about that, because Josee was clearly my favorite, and I was so surprised -and sad- she didn't win and wasn't at 1996 Worlds

 

[Colonel Green]

1996 Canadians Ladies : clearly not the best competition ever !

But a step up from the year before!

 

[coppertop1]

Agreed. Robinson was practically fresh out of juniors with very little senior experience when she made the 1995 World Team, too.

Add to that, she was the only Canadian to qualify. Though even if Netty Kim had qualified, we would still only send one to 1996 Worlds.

Speaking of Josee's meltdown, it makes me wonder with Kaetlyn Osmond turning professional, if Gabrielle Daleman found it difficult to push herself without a national rival on the homefront.

That's likely part of it. Carrying a country on your shoulders is a heavy burden

I'm not entirely sure that had Josee gone to Worlds in 1996, things would have panned out differently for 1998. Yes, Josee would have probably been top ten. But was she planning to stay for the Nagano Olympics? If she wasn't, then Humphreys and Derochie would have gone to the 1997 Worlds. We know what happens to Susan, and I don't think Derochie would have placed high enough to earn a spot. So, we would still be earning a spot at a fall event and that didn't happen.

 

[Colonel Green]

Speaking of Josee's meltdown, it makes me wonder with Kaetlyn Osmond turning professional, if Gabrielle Daleman found it difficult to push herself without a national rival on the homefront.

Daleman's two seasons post-Osmond retirement have been beset by so many devastating health problems that I don't think one can really assess whether motivation was an issue.

 

[Rock2]

I agree that Robinson really did improve over her career, although she was always slow...I remember seeing her at 2004 Canadians and she was absolutely crawling across the ice. I think that this year was the beginning of the improvement though. It was the first year she worked with Lori Nichol, and the step up in sophistication really showed. I like her short from that year much more than the long though.

I'll buck the trend...as usual.
Her 1999 LP was my favorite of all of her programs. She skated it quite well in qualies at world's that year but IMHO was underscored.

I ran into her a few years after she retired and asked her about her decision to announce her retirement after the 2004 world's SP. I said it seemed like she was skating better and better at each event as well as each phase at world's (left a comment on speed out of all of it) yet was losing more and more ground to the field. Was the retirement decision driven in part by realizing the new system wouldn't be an opportunity for her. She acklowledged that was the case but didn't comment on any other factors.

The panel just did not like her under the new system. When you input SS typically as the first PCS score she was doomed because of the cascading effect on the rest of the PCS.

 

[Habs]

I really started to appreciate JRo in the later years of her career. She became a solid, if not spectacular, skater and represented Canada well. She was the best of a bad lot and was heavily criticized, but she handled herself with grace and poise.

 

[Maximillian]

Thanks @Erin for all these vids, as an American lacking cable I never got to see any Canadian Nationals back in the day and I have to say it's been nice watching the events from the early 1990s, I especially enjoy rediscovering Karen Preston, who I recall seeing in Albertville and really liking. As is mentioned, Preston had terrific deep knees and wonderful basics and I admit I much preferred her to Josee whose still knees always bugged me (I realize now that was a nerves thing, but at the time I was only seeing Preston and Chouinard once or twice a year, if that). Preston, like the rest of the Canadian ladies of that era, struggled with jump consistency, but her basic skating was gorgeous.