#brandon18

Backstory....

Canada’s top figure skaters gave Brandon a taste of the Olympics on Sunday, with a stop at Westoba Place as part of their Thank You Canada Tour.

A crowd of more than 3,300 people took in the show, with Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir, Patrick Chan, Meagan Duhamel, Eric Radford, Kaetlyn Osmond, Elvis Stojko, Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje all part of the performance.

Their outfits sparkled under the bright lights of the arena, as the skilled athletes performed great jumps and spins in front of the Brandon crowd.

Audience members said they were impressed by what they saw early on.

After watching them since the 2010 Olympics, it was an opportunity Alexis Teetaert said that she couldn’t pass up.

She came from Melita to watch the show.

"I wanted to come to see all the skaters that I’ve watched through all of the Olympics. I’ve been following some of these guys for years," Teetaert said.

Teetaert never thought she would ever get to watch these stars perform in person.

"It’s kind of special to be able to see it first hand especially like in small town Brandon, you never really thought that you would be able to, so it’s exciting," she said.

To see their talent first-hand is incredible, she added.

"You kind of get swept up in it, and for me it’s something that I’m never going to be able to do, so it’s just really neat to watch," she said.

Jaedyn Moore also came out to watch the show on Sunday, all the way from Saskatchewan. Moore spent a lot of her time watching the Olympics on TV, but it was a different experience in person, she said.

"It’s cool seeing like the movements of them and how it actually happens," Moore said. "I’m a dancer, and it’s hard enough to do the moves on the ground let alone on the ice."

As a hockey player, Kristen Friesen was also in awe at how they could perform such delicate manoeuvres. She came to watch the performance after winning tickets to the show. Friesen and her mom watch the Olympics together on TV, and now they could watch them skate together in person, she said.

"You can really see how smooth they are," Friesen said.

"It’s just like so much different [compared to hockey] how smooth it is. How they can do the jumps and spin I don’t know. I don’t know how they can spin themselves so fast, it’s pretty incredible."

The show is something that they wanted to bring to fans, Chan said in a statement on the Thank You Canada Tour’s website.

"There are so many amazing people across Canada who have supported this group, [and] we wanted to thank them all," Chan said. "We are going to do just that."

After their performance in Brandon on Sunday, the Olympians will head to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., for a performance on Thursday.