When Kaetlyn Osmond broke her leg in practice four years ago, she posted a picture of the x-ray on social media showing a painful fracture that took surgery, and seven screws drilled into the bone, in order to mend.
"I think I got a little bit of hardware in my leg," Osmond joked at the time. It was all she could do in that moment – immobilized, deflated, and thinking privately to herself that her dream of standing on an Olympic podium might be over.
She contemplated quitting figure skating, and she was still only a teenager.
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But on Friday, the 22-year-old from Marystown, Nfld., having battled back from that leg injury and adding a new jump to her arsenal since then, finally got the hardware she wanted, winning the bronze medal in Pyeongchang.
In the most pressure-packed four minutes of her life, Osmond skated a near-perfect long program, something she had struggled all season to do, and claimed Canada's first medal in women's figure skating since Joannie Rochette won bronze in Vancouver eight years ago.
It is only the sixth time a Canadian woman has ascended the podium at the Olympics, adding Osmond's name to a roster of greats that also includes Barbara Ann Scott, Petra Burka, Karen Magnussen, Elizabeth Manley and Rochette.
And on the day that Canada achieved its best medal count ever at the Winter Olympics, it was Osmond – with the 27th medal – who put her country over the top.
Skating to the music from Swan Lake, Osmond took the bronze with a score of 152.15 in the free skate, for a combined mark of 231.02 from the short and long programs.
Russia's Alina Zagitova won gold, with a combined score of 239.57 points, while her teammate Evgenia Medvedeva claimed the silver with 238.26 points.
The morning leading up to the skate was unusual Osmond said. Normally chatty and carefree, she was uncharacteristically quiet as the nerves set in. It was her second Olympics, but in Sochi – where she placed 13th – Osmond was never expected to contend. Here, a spot on the podium was hers for the taking, even with the powerhouse Russians waging a battle with each other through a pair of aggressive jump-laden routines.
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"Today I was absolutely terrified all day. I was nervous," Osmond said. "Usually I talk a lot, I didn't talk very much today."
She thought back to the broken leg, but not about how it had held her back for close to two years. Instead, she thought about everything the injury had done for her: it made her more focused, more determined, and the training she did to rehabilitate the leg had only made her a stronger skater on the ice.
She also managed to add a new jump to her repertoire since the injury, the triple toeloop, which made her skating better, and brought lift to her scores when she could execute it cleanly.
"I don't think I would have been able to perform the way I did today without that injury, Osmond said. "I regrouped and almost became a new person afterwards. I had to mature, I had to refocus on how to stay on the ice and feel strong. And I don't think I would have been able to perform this choreography as good as I could without that experience."
Early in her performance, Ravi Walia, who has coached her since age 10, had a good feeling. When she landed her first two triple toeloops, he could see the skater was undaunted, and not intimidated by the moment.
"Once she did that I knew it was going to be good," Walia said. "It's so exciting that she skated her best at the Olympic Games. She really planned to peak here – and when it actually happened it's so exciting."
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When Rochette won the bronze medal in Vancouver, Osmond watched the performance from her bedroom, underneath the covers. She was 14 at the time, and it was past her bedtime. After performing under figure skating's brightest lights on Friday, she recalled Rochette's skate, and how it seemed like an impossible goal.
"When she made the podium, I said 'That was incredible. That is something I'm never going to be able to do,'" Osmond said. "So it amazed me four years later when I was at the Olympics itself and I came 13th. And my goal here was to just improve on that 13th place finish."
Those last Olympics are a blur, Osmond says. But in Pyeongchang she came in less wide-eyed and more driven, helping Canada win a gold medal in the team figure skating event at the start of the Games, then retreated to Seoul to train in private to get ready for her individual event.
Though she struggled at times in her long program this season, Osmond said she could tell during the performance it was going well, which only made her want to skate on, even when the music stopped.
"When I hit my ending position I didn't want it to end," she said.
When she stood on the podium, Osmond searched for her parents in the crowd. When she finally spotted her mom, Jackie, Osmond noticed she was sobbing. Mission accomplished, she thought.
"That's often my goal at competitions – to see how to make my mom cry," she said. "It's not that hard."
While Osmond's skate could barely have gone better, it was a tough day for Toronto's Gabrielle Daleman. After placing seventh in the short program, Daleman struggled through a series of stumbles in her free skate, leaving her in 15th with a combined score of 172.46. After her performance, the 20-year-old Daleman wept, disappointed with her mistakes.
Osmond's bronze is Canada's fourth figure skating medal in Pyeongchang, in addition to the gold in team figure skating, a gold in ice dance from Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, and a bronze from pairs skaters Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford. It is the most figure skating medals the Canadian squad has won at a single Olympics, eclipsing the three it returned home with after Sochi.
"To get four, this is amazing," Mike Slipchuk, Skate Canada's high-performance director, said. "We knew there was an outside shot, and it was possible, but to actually have it come to fruition is just a testament to our skaters and our coaches."
But with the expected retirement of Virtue and Moir, Duhamel and Radford, and Sochi silver-medalist Patrick Chan, Canada's figure skating program now heads into a rebuild of sorts, with Osmond expected to lead them into the future.
"This was a unique group that we had," Slipchuk said. "The rebuild is starting already."
While some of us were silently urging Osmond to punch Comrade Bolshoi in the nose, the 22-year-old from Newfoundland regained her poise and did the polite Canadian thing. “I’m very happy that I made the podium and slowly closing the gap between . . .”
First gold, by the way, for the “Olympic Athletes from Russia” in Pyeongchang. Just sayin’. Bronze on top of team gold last week for Osmond. Just sayin’. Four medals for the Canadian figure skating squad. Just sayin’.
Yes, a pair of Russian teenagers had triumphed, gold and silver on Friday —though in upside-down order from what nearly everyone had expected. Yes, Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva were damn near untouchable with their ethereal “Don Quixote” and “Anna Karenina.”
In the most blissful moment of her life, a bronze medal in ladies’ figure skating at the Olympics , the jerk had to make it not about what Osmond had won but what she’d lost.
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—The reporter, an obnoxious old hand from Soviet days, rendered Kaetlyn Osmond temporarily speechless: “Do you think the Russian women are invincible?”
She was just fine, with a commanding rendition of her “Black Swan” free routine, the only teensy defect an over-rotation on a triple Lutz. Most pristine version of the program Osmond has executed this season, though.
“They’re really strong and they’re really consistent. So, who knows. They’re just incredible. I can only do what I can do to try to . . . be better, I guess?”
She’d finished 13th in Sochi, at her debut Games. Has climbed steadily globally since then, currently the reigning world silver medallist.
They were popping Screech on The Rock, no doubt, and celebrating in Edmonton, which Osmond now calls home. Thrilled for this young woman, from coast to coast, after a career interrupted by a stress fracture in her ankle, a torn ankle and a horrifically broken femur; learning to walk again, really, before she could get back up on skates, sidelined for more than a year before retrieving her national title.
“I’ve been focusing on every small detail, every mental aspect, every physical trait of that program. Being able to come here, finally put up two clean skates, which I haven’t done in a really long time, it really means the world to me.”
But an Olympic medal, when she’d come so close to quitting the sport a few years back, surrounded now by audacious sprites and wraiths: priceless.
“My goal here was just to improve on that 13th-place finish. When I heard that I came third, I just reminded myself that that’s something I thought that I would never be able to do.”
Seven triples, three sets of combinations, including a triple Salchow/double toe/double loop and a triple flip/triple toe — triple-triples now the Sterling standard for elite women — top Level 4s on spiral and spin and step sequences for a free skate score of 152.15, 231.02 overall.
She’d thought, hoped, that participating in the team event — third for her short program contribution — would help banish the butterflies coming into Friday’s contribution. Had, like the rest of the skating team, retreated to Seoul in between, to double-down on training far from the Olympic maelstrom.
“For my short (on Wednesday) that worked. Today I was absolutely terrified all day. I was nervous. Usually I talk a lot. I didn’t talk very much today.”
Once she’d made it safely through her bugaboo triple loop, however, calm enveloped her. At the boards, coach Ravi Walia could sense it immediately.
“It’s a triple that she learned last, after the last Olympics,” he said. “She broke her leg and she came back and that’s when she got that jump. But for some reason, she’s struggled with it all season in the program. Once she did that, I knew it was going to be good.”
Personal-best good.
“She respects the other girls so much,” added Walia. “So she’s more excited to be skating with them and she doesn’t compare herself to them.”
That would be a tad masochistic, especially with the stupendous Russians. And stupefied might also describe 18-year-old Medvedeva, who hadn’t lost a competition in two years until she broke her foot in November, sitting out the Russian championships last March. Many had believed her simply unbeatable. Yet Zagitova, just 15, had been creeping up all season, edging her compatriot in the Grand Prix final in December and winning the short program competition here. While Medvedeva and Zagitova actually tied in Friday’s free skate segment, the younger girl emerged with gold on the strength of her world-record short, mere minutes after Medvedeva had bettered her own world record. It was that edgy close a thing: 156.65 each in the free, 239.57 to 238.26 overall. And when Medvedeva’s scores flashed on the board, her lovely face crumpled. Because she knew. What was to have been her Olympic moment had gone before it had arrived.
She is the superior skater, but Zagitova is a jumping genius. In practice this week, she reeled off a five-triple combination. That’s never been done.
By the time she got to the mixed zone, Medvedeva had her game face back on. “I felt today in my program really like Anna Karenina in the movie.” Which maybe was an omen — in the Tolstoy masterpiece, Anna throws herself under a train. “I put everything out there that I had. I left everything on the ice. I have no regrets.
“Honestly, I skated like in a fog, for the first time. It is because I realize that I am enjoying the process, these four minutes are historical and they only belong to me. The whole world is watching only me for those four minutes. My soul thrives on that feeling.”
Zagitova claimed afterwards she’d been shaking from head to foot, startled by her high score and still not quite believing that she was the Olympic victor. “I think I need some time to understand that I have won the Olympic Games.” Yet she remained slightly self-critical. “I would give me a four with a little plus (out of five) for my performance.’’
Some observers have been harsh with Zagitova — or at least her coaches — for stacking the deck by placing all her jumps in the second half of her programs, where they are rewarded with an automatic 10 per cent value added. Many have called for the rules to be changed to forbid it.
But that’s a debate for another day.
On this day, her greatness can’t be denied.
A day which Kaetlyn Osmond wished could go on and on and on . . .
“When I hit my ending position, I didn’t want it to end. I was just loving every single minute of it.”
GANGNEUNG, Korea, Republic Of — Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmond has won a bronze medal in women’s figure skating at the Winter Olympics.
The reigning world silver medallist from Marystown, N.L., skating to music from "Black Swan," scored 152.15 in her long program for a combined score of 231.02.
She was also third after the short program.
Osmond’s medal is historic as it boosts Canada’s total in Pyeongchang to 27, an all-time high for the country at the Winter Games.
Russia’s Alina Zagitova, just 15 years old, scored a combined 239.57 to capture gold. Teammate and reigning world champion Evgenia Medvedeva of Russia won silver with 238.26 points.
Osmond, 22, who almost quit skating after breaking her leg in a training accident in 2014, nailed her long program, landing seven triples jumps. Her only mishap was a slight bobble on a triple Lutz.
Canada hadn’t won an Olympic medal in women’s singles since Joannie Rochette claimed bronze at the 2010 Vancouver Games just days after her mom died of a heart attack.
It was a disastrous day for Gabrielle Daleman, who was seventh after the short program. The 20-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., fell three times — on her opening triple toeloop-triple toeloop combination, her triple Lutz, and triple flip.
Daleman, who won bronze at last year’s world championships, was deducted 4.00 points for the falls
Osmond and Daleman will be looked to as leaders of Canadian team that will have to rebuild after these Olympics. Among those retiring are ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who won double gold in Pyeongchang, three-time world champion Patrick Chan, and two-time world pairs champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, who captured bronze.
Osmond and Daleman, along with the retiring veterans, claimed gold in the team event to open these Games.
