THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TORONTO — Brian Orser’s coaching relationship with Olympic champion Kim Yu-na ended in a flurry of unanswered emails and finally a curt meeting with the skater’s mother.
But the Canadian coach still doesn’t know why he was fired, as the one person that has remained tight-lipped through this recent turn of events is the skater herself.
"I’ve loved working with her, and I love my job. I don’t know what her take is on everything, I’m sure I’m the bad guy…," Orser said with a half-hearted laugh in an interview with The Canadian Press. "I did everything I can, I always do everything I can for her, and I have no regrets.
"It was a great run and I’m grateful for that."
Everything seemed perfect back in February when Orser coached the elegant 19-year-old to Olympic gold in Vancouver.
But six months later, Orser is out as her coach, informed by Kim’s mother Park Mi-hee in an Aug. 2 meeting in Toronto that included coach Tracy Wilson and a translator but not the skater herself.
"The one thing that was really missing at that meeting was Yu-na," said Orser, adding that he briefly held out hope they would have a change of heart.
Orser and Wilson decided to approach the skater last Thursday at the Toronto Cricket Club where the skater continues to train, but left that brief meeting still in the dark.
"We said, ‘We’re kind of confused, we don’t really know what’s going on here, because everything was just sort of left,"’ Orser said. "She said, ‘I’m confused too,’ and she was crying, so Tracy and I said, ‘We’ve had four great years and we don’t want to take away anything from that, we’ve all learned some wonderful things. Whatever you decide to do, we’ll support you.’ And that’s the truth."
Kim posted a message Tuesday on her Twitter account Yunaaaa, saying she knows "exactly what’s going on now."
"Would you please stop to tell a lie, B? I know exactly what’s going on now and this is what I’ve DECIDED," Kim tweeted.
Kim’s management company AT Sports official Kim Sun-young confirmed that Yunaaaa is Kim’s official Twitter account and that the skater posted the tweet, though added it was quickly deleted. The official did not provide a reason for the tweet being taken down.
Orser said he had some pretty obvious hints the relationship was heading south several weeks earlier.
Following the world championships in March, Kim wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue skating competitively and Orser said he and Wilson opted to give the skater her space, telling her "if you want to keep skating it has to come from your heart."
Kim then announced at a press conference last month that she was skipping the upcoming Grand Prix season, but would skate at next year’s world championships.
Not only was the news conference a surprise to Orser, the decision itself was as well. Orser had to hear the news through the media.
A mere half an hour later, the coach got a call from former Canadian ice dancer Shae-Lynn Bourne, informing him she’d been asked to choreograph Kim’s short program — David Wilson, Orser’s co-worker at The Cricket Club, had been choreographing Kim’s programs.
"I started sending e-mails to them (in South Korea), asking if somebody could let me know what’s going on," Orser said. "They weren’t mean-spirited, I just said I need to know, I deserve some respect so I don’t have to read about it or hear it second-hand.
"They were there for 10 days and I didn’t get one response back from anyone, the agent or Yu-na herself, so I really knew something was wrong."
The split is a huge disappointment for Orser who’s worked with Kim since 2006 when the skater arrived in Toronto a shy girl who wasn’t very happy on the ice. In their four years together, she fluorished into a world and Olympic champion who dazzled fans at the Vancouver Games.
She shattered her own world record for total score by 18 points at the Games, where the two painted a striking image — the graceful teen who confidently carried the weight of a country’s hopes on her shoulders, and the battle-scarred coach, a two-time Olympic silver medallist himself.
"It was great, wasn’t it?" Orser said.
Back home in South Korea, Kim is wildly popular among her legions of fans who know her as "Queen Yu-Na," and her celebrity status keeps her from leaving her parents’ house without a phalanx of security guards.
Her gold medal was South Korea’s first Winter Olympic medal in something other than speedskating. Kim also won the 2009 world championships in record fashion, and three Grand Prix final titles.
AT Sports released a statement Tuesday saying relations between the skater and coach have been "uncomfortable" since May.
The statement continued: "In early August, Kim’s agency and Orser agreed for the two taking some unofficial time-off and since then, Kim has been training alone and working on her new program with David Wilson as her choreographer."
"Kim and her management were taken aback when Orser announced on August 23 that he would no longer be able to care for Yu-Na Kim, which Kim’s agency understood as Orser’s decision to step down as Kim’s coach," the statement added.
AT Sports said there are no plans on who will be Kim’s new coach.
"I would like to thank Brian for helping me accomplish my greatest dream which was to become an Olympic Gold medallist ," said Kim, in the Tuesday statement released by her agency. "I wish him every success for the future."
– With files from The Associated Press.
