High Hopes Dashed

Less than two weeks before the start of the 2020 World Championships in Montréal, Canadian ice dancers Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sørensen announced their withdrawal from the competition.

Though this news was not what they wanted to announce and not what the skating world wanted to hear, in the end it was a moot point when the Championships were cancelled less than a week later.

It may have been the longest of shots for Fournier Beaudry and Sørensen to hope to be ready to take on the best at the World Championships in Montréal last March.

Sørensen, 31, underwent a rather complex procedure on Dec. 16 to relieve persistent pain in his right knee — a surgery that, at the time, he was told would require a recovery period of six to eight weeks. In fact, it kept him off the ice until mid-February, leaving only five weeks to prepare for the biggest competition of the season.

In late February Sørensen sounded hopeful in a text to saying: “We are working very hard with the federation and my medical team to ensure our participation at Worlds. So far it’s been one day at a time, but I’m doing very well.”