COACHING IN A VIRTUAL WORLD
He is one of his sport’s ultimate travelling men, a coaching savant whose desire to develop the world’s best figure skaters is hardly constrained by his own country’s borders.
In ordinary times, Brian Orser would be bouncing across Asia or Europe countless times over, racking up the frequent flier miles. It has been his life and his livelihood for almost 14 years.
But these are not ordinary times. In a COVID-19 world, international travel is almost at a standstill. And so Orser’s passport has been starved of travel stamps for most of 2020 — at least since the global pandemic’s tentacles fully extended their reach into North America back in the spring.
“I have not been on an airplane since Junior Worlds, so that would be the beginning of March,” said Orser of his trip to Estonia. “I would normally have done a couple hundred thousand miles by now.”
For coaches such as Orser, however, that is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to adapting to a new world. While COVID restrictions in Canada vary from province to province — sometimes even city to city — the bottom line is that conditions are vastly different for everyone and ‘normal’ now takes on a new definition.
In Toronto, those restrictions were tightened in late November with a lockdown — the second since the start of the pandemic — that shuttered many arenas across Canada’s largest city. However, the Province of Ontario granted an exemption for high-performance athletes, meaning training could continue at the Cricket Club, but with strict regulations. Only 10 people were allowed on the ice during a single session, and that number included skaters and coaches.
As Orser sees it, though, the fact that training can continue at all is vital for his club’s skaters, and he views every opportunity as a blessing these days — no matter what level of restrictions must be adhered to by one
