Nguyen’s world junior title shows future of Canadian figure skating is bright

TORONTO – Nam Nguyen was 11 years old when he performed in the figure skating exhibition gala at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, a pint-sized phenom who charmed the crowd in his checked pants and goofy big round glasses.

His role represented the future of figure skating.

Nguyen met with reporters Tuesday fresh off his recent victory at the world junior championships, and said he couldn’t have imagined back then that the future would arrive so quickly.

“It is crazy,” Nguyen said. “I was on the Olympic ice just performing, doing the gala, and I think from there a lot of people took notice of me. And from then until now, I trained really hard and I accomplished a lot of things in that time.

“And now I’m the junior world champion. Talking to you.”

The 15-year-old from Toronto reeled off triple Axels with ease at practice Tuesday at the Toronto Cricket Club. He’s grown six inches or more in the past year, and carries himself with a maturity that wasn’t there even earlier this season.

Saturday in Sofia, Bulgaria, Nguyen laid down two clean programs, and landed two triple Axels in his free skate — a jump that has tripped up even Patrick Chan a few times — en route to claiming the world junior crown. He won despite being three years younger than the maximum allowable age for world juniors.

“When I saw the score, it was unbelievable, that’s the highest score I’ve ever gotten internationally. . . when I sat down there were so many things going on in my head, ‘I skated awesome,’ and things like that. I saw the score and thought, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe.’”

What’s been a whirlwind season will continue next week when Nguyen competes for Canada at the world (senior) championships in Tokyo.

More and more these days, Nguyen gets compared to Chan, who isn’t competing next week.

“Some people say I may be the next Patrick Chan, and I think that’s a huge honour, he’s a three-time world champion, Olympic silver medallist, and that’s amazing,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen started figure skating when he was five, and like Chan, he originally took it up to improve his skating skills for hockey.

“I like to jump and spin rather than chase a puck,” he said.

He won national titles in juvenile, pre-novice, novice, and junior, becoming the youngest Canadian to do so with each one.

Nguyen then moved from Vancouver to Toronto in the summer of 2012 to work with Brian Orser, the two-time Olympic silver medallist who guided Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu to Olympic gold in Sochi and Yuna Kim to the Olympic women’s title in Vancouver.

“I told him (when he arrived), ‘OK, enough of the cute factor.’ It was fun and it was cute, and everybody was like, ‘Oh my god, he’s so cute,’” Orser said after practice Tuesday. “‘But now you’ve got to be a big boy, and you’ve got to skate like that, and there has to be maturity.’ So we started developing that.

“Also in his jumping . . . He had these spindly little jumps, which was enough to get him through novice and junior, but when you’re in senior you’ve got to have some big jumps and get some air time, and cover the ice, and speed.”

Nguyen only mastered his triple Axel in January. His sudden growth spurt had proved problematic — he went from four foot seven to 5-5 in just over a year, he said.

“It’s hard for the athlete, it’s hard for some of the people around him, parents, etc., to understand that process. And you have to just dig deep and push through it, because he grew a lot,” Orser said “When you’re trying to do a sport that requires balance and co-ordination, and you’re all of a sudden thrown an extra half a foot to your height, plus he matured and his body is changing. . . But he was persistent and patient and he just kept pushing through.”

Nguyen and Orser are already thinking ahead to quad jumps. They’ll work on during the spring and summer, and will hopefully add the four-revolution jump to his arsenal next season.

“He gets a little bit scared of some of these new jumps and he kind of surprises himself, like ‘That wasn’t so bad.’ It’s like when you jump off the 10-metre (diving board), and you stand there, and then you jump, and then the next thing you’re climbing back up again, because it was so much fun,” Orser said. “He’s a little bit scared of the quads, but he knows now he has to do them.”

Orser said Nguyen is the type of skater who once he masters a jump he rarely misses it — hence his ability to reel off a couple dozen clean triple Axels in practice Tuesday.

“It will be kind of hit and miss, he’ll be struggling with it, and all of a sudden when he gets it, he gets it. Like the Axel. It was a long road to get it. But when he got it, he got it,” Orser said.

Nguyen arrived at practice Tuesday after two hours of class at Northview Heights Secondary School. He’s taking only two classes this semester, and did the same thing in the fall semester in case he qualified for the Sochi Olympic team.

Both of Nguyen’s parents are from Vietnam. His dad Sony is an engineer while his mom Thu is a business analyst. His nine-year-old sister Kim also skates out of the Toronto Cricket Club.

Orser said it’s not too bold of a statement to call Nguyen the future of the sport.

“This is going to be the new guard. The top four or five (at world juniors), these are the guys we’re going to see down the road,” the coach said. “There’s a change now happening. It’s happening sooner than anybody thought. For him now to go to worlds as the world junior champion, it’s going to put him at another level, and I think he’ll skate up to it.”

Orser said he’s seen Nguyen’s confidence and maturity grow as quickly as his physical stature, and when they departed for the world junior championships the goal suddenly went from finishing in the top-five to winning a medal or even finishing atop the podium.

“From the second he arrived in Sofia, every single practice was amazing and consistent and strong,” Orser said. “And I could see the judges all watching him and I could see all the other guys scrambling and falling, and messy, and he was just every day, every practice, organized and in control and he took ownership.”

Orser is proud to have a Canadian doing so well on the heels of his success with Hanyu at the Sochi Olympics. Orser also coaches European champion Javier Fernandez of Spain.

“It feels good,” Orser said. “I know I get a little criticism for not having any Canadians. But all these guys have all come to me, including Nam, so I’m just kind of running a business here, doing my job.

“But I’m proud I have a Canadian jacket to wear and I’m showing some success with some Canadian skaters as well, this one in particular. He has a bright future, and I wear the jacket with pride.”

Orser said training with the likes of Hanyu, who won Olympic gold in Sochi at just 19, and Fernandez, has helped Nguyen immensely.

“When he sees the guys, how they work, how they are responsible, and just the technical stuff, the height, speed, charisma, some of that will rub off on you.”