Gold Medal Skating Champ Jeffrey Buttle Returns Home To Hero’s Welcome
Posted March 24, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
There can’t be anything more Canadian than skating. So when one of our own excels at the sport, the normally doused feelings of pride Great White Northerners so often like to downplay are aroused to new heights.
And that’s the buzz around Jeff Buttle, who managed to win gold at the World Figure Skating Championships in Sweden this weekend. The 25-year-old from Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario almost stood on his head during a performance that won raves, cheers – and the gold medal.
Buttle finished an amazing 14 points ahead of his nearest competitor on the weekend in Goteborg, an effort that has made him the toast of Southern Ontario. In typically Canadian fashion, he’s tried to downplay the accolades.
“Everybody keeps calling me the world champion and I keep blushing at them,” he admits. “When they say that, I don’t know how to react but I certainly like it, that’s for sure.”
The ice expert landed eight triple jumps and amazed the judges and the crowd with some fancy footwork that had many breathless. His spins left his rivals in the dust, and left him on the podium claiming gold. “I was so happy with how I skated,” he agrees. “When I finished my program, I wasn’t thinking about the title. I just thought, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I just laid it down under that much pressure.’ I was just really happy with that.”
He came back to 40 messages on his hotel phone mostly from well wishers back home. And on Monday, they were there to great him in person as the newest Canadian hero emerged at Pearson International Airport, bearing his luggage, his skates and all that hardware around his neck.
“It was so overwhelming,” Buttle admitted to dozens of fans and reporters. “All I wanted to do was go out and have a great skate and I was really happy with that so when the marks came up it was surreal … I didn’t think what was happening was actually happening.”
Buttle wasn’t the only Canadian winner at the championship. He was joined by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir with the silver for ice dancing, while Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison took the pairs bronze. It’s the first time three Canadians have made it to the podium since 1993.
And now Buttle’s superior performance has been enough to get the locals thinking of the next big challenge and put him straight in the forefront for gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. But you won’t have to wait until then to see him in action.
Buttle brings the Canadian Stars on Ice tour to the Air Canada Centre on April 25 and to Copps Coliseum the following day, as it makes its way across the country.
