Sale and Pelletier to team up with Russian pair

Copyright 2002 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.

Todd Eldredge says that his skating costume should include a striped shirt.

The former world champion jokes that he'll have to referee when Olympic pairs co-champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier and Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze perform a number together during the Stars on Ice tour.

Stars on Ice, generally regarded as the best of the annual professional skating tours, unveiled the itinerary for its Canadian spring tour yesterday. The caravan rolls into Hamilton in the middle of its April 26-May 4 cross-country trek, pitching its tent at Copps Coliseum, Saturday, April 26.

Local skating aficionados have already seen Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze this autumn, as part of the Kurt Browning 'Gotta Skate' special which airs on two different television networks this weekend.

But Sale and Pelletier haven't been in Hamilton since winning the national title here last January. After their controversial Olympics loss to Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, which was followed by the French tour de farce and subsequent re-awarding of co-gold medals, Sale and Pelletier kept a low profile, at least on the ice. They did have their big gala in Edmonton, during which they skated a friendly number with the Russians, but otherwise, skating audiences haven't really seen them.

"We basically took it easy," Pelletier says of the last eight months. "Fifty per cent by our choice, and 50 per cent not by our choice. We had some business decisions to make, which made things all better. We trained all summer, and are doing some TV specials. And now we're touring with Stars.

"We're happy about it. Because the year before the Olympics was draining and I haven't had a life for about four years. So it was great to have the spring and see the actual change of the seasons for once. And have summer to visit the family."

The 50 per cent that was not the Canadian pair's choice sprung from a change in agents. After spending a year with Craig Fenech, who's primarily a baseball and football agent, they severed ties and went with an Edmonton-based businessman.

The messy transition couldn't have come at a worse time.

With several golden offers to tour or perform in special events returned to sender or going unanswered, mainly because of the confused management situation, Sale and Pelletier did not reap the financial windfall that could have been theirs. A planned tour never found life, while Elvis Stojko's went ahead as scheduled. Some observers estimate the lost potential income as high as $3 million.

No cause for concern, says Pelletier, they needed the peace and quiet. And none of our business anyway.

"First of all, you don't lose money you don't have," he said over the phone from Lake Placid where Stars is in the final stage of rehearsals. "I've never been money driven. There's not enough money to make me do what I don't want to do. So if my bank account isn't the worry for me, it shouldn't be for anyone else."

If the amateur world was robbed of the electricity and one-upmanship between the rival Russians and Canadians when each pair announced that they'd turn professional for good, Stars on Ice should benefit nicely.

"It's really about the fact that all of them are such great skaters, that you want to see them separately and you want to see them together," says Eldredge, a Stars mainstay.

And it's really about show biz. In the entertainment world you don't let the awareness factor of something as massive as the Salt Lake pairs scandal fade into the mists of time. Not yet anyway. You get a little mileage out of it, at least.

"We like skating with them, it helps make us better," Sale said. "We're not obviously competing on tour to see who has the better numbers. But we do kind of have inside jokes for each other."

There is a dire dearth of marquee stars on the International Skating Union (amateur) circuit this autumn: dance is dismal; pairs predictable; Alexei Yagudin's injury won't let him compete in the men's division until possibly Worlds; and the new cadre of women is still scraping for public recognition.

For the first time since 1995, when Kurt Browning, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Oksana Baiul and others left the 'eligible' ranks, pro skating has arguably got a more saleable cast than the amateurs.

Meanwhile, Stars boasts Yagudin, and the two pairs, all Olympic gold medalists, Eldredge, and Jennifer Robinson to add to the ageless Browning and other longtime headliners.

"After the Olympics there is always kind of a changing of the guard and that's happened this year," says Eldredge who, like Yagudin, retains his Olympic eligibility. "I think the ISU ranks have seen a lot of new faces come up and it always takes a couple of years for those new faces to kind of become old faces and for the ISU to get those names out there."

Browning, in his ninth professional season, offers this frank perspective:

"I think the touring world has not necessarily been infused with a lot of talent over the last few years. But this Olympic Games brought us some new faces. We were due to get some of those stars who come out of the Olympics."