Scott Moir with a copy of Taking The Ice by Pj Kwong
Whew! A loooong day yesterday involving book signings at two separate locations. The first was a suburban Toronto rink – home of the Richmond Training Centre where Tomas Verner now hangs his hat. I have to tell you that Tomas (Tommy to his friends Mr. Tommy to me!) is an absolutley delightful young man, the kind we want our daughters to bring home – courteous, charming and scary smart. In any event, his Canadian “den mother” Carmen James had organized my appearnace and told me that Tomas would be arriving shortly with his costume designer. Oooooohh….yay….good news for me as I have to write a skating related story every week for CBCsports.ca and this sounded like I was going to be able to snag a few answers to questions and have something to write about. Little did I know what was in store.
Suffice to say I got a really cool little story about his costume that will be on the CBC website a little later this week and I have something to share with y’all too!
Tomas arrived at the rink and in a rush tumbled through the doors with a slight, smiling blond man named Jamie Scott in tow. After hugs and hellos, Tomas told me the man’s name and as I introduced myself he said have we met? I said I didn’t think so – he said “How did you know my name?” “Well…um…er…Tomas told me.” I said. He chewed on that for a minute still not sure that I hadn’t somehow “magic-ked” (my kids’ word when they were little for making the “im”- possible) the information. The guys had to quickly head to the coaches’ room in order for Tomas to try on his new costume and hit the ice to make sure it worked.
What interested me was how the two had met? I mean what are the odds that a figure skating champion would cross paths with a costume designer who primarily works for theatres and opera companies across the US as well as Broadway. I was invited into the coaches’ room after Tomas had tried out the outfit (I really like the shrt 🙂 and that is when I got the story. It seems that Jamie is a skater who competes at the Adult level in the US and is a fan of Verner’s. In the summer, he sent Tomas some sketches of costumes that would be perfect for a Dvorak piece of music if he ever used it. (I just found out that Dvorak was Czech!) In any event, Tomas said that while he was trying all of the different skating schools this summer the letter went to his parents’ place and it took a while for him to catch up to his mail. Once he did, he was sufficiently impressed that he asked Jamie if he wanted to work with him this season. As Jamie recounted that moment he is still breathless with excitement at the thought. To say he was thrilled was an understatement. He told me that they have gone through six sketches but have seemingly hit on the winning choice to be debuted in China.
The other fun part for me was moving on to Mississauga and the Challenge event – the qualifier for Canadian Nationals. It’s funny who you run into in the back hallways of the rink! More than anything, seeing Bryce Davison on crutches but otherwise looking great was a treat. I also saw Jessica Dube skate a solid free with just three weeks of training – that should put the ladies on notice for Canadians.