The days after Thérèse’s death were a blur. Rochette would cry, and Perron would prop her up. Then Perron would cry, and the cycle began anew. Unbeknownst to Rochette, Perron took Thérèse’s glasses from her purse. She put them in her team jacket for Joannie’s short and long programs. “I wanted her with us,” says Perron.
The times outside of practice and performance time were the most difficult. They’d read through the hundreds of emails flooding in offering sympathy and support.
Perron kept Rochette in a protective bubble. The media let her practise in peace. They saw few newspapers and there was no television in their level of the village. “We didn’t realize the impact,” Perron said, “how big this is.”
As recently as the first week of the Olympics, Rochette was phoning home to her mother every day, lamenting the problems she was having in training with her triple Lutz. And her mother, in a role she enjoyed far more than the stress of competitions, offered her love and advice. Close your eyes, she told her daughter. Visualize. You’ve been landing them for years.
And so she skated for herself. And for her mother, too. Because 10 years from now, “when the pain has gone away a little bit,” Joannie did not want to regret throwing away all they had worked for.
And as for that triple Lutz? She nailed it to the ice, just like Maman told her.
