Philippe Candeloro

Philippe Christophe Lucien Candeloro was born in Courbevoie, France on 17 February 1972, to Marie-Thérèse and Luigi Candeloro. He is the youngest of four children and his siblings in order of age are Marinelle, Alain, and Laurent. His parents met in Italy when Luigi was sixteen and while Marie-Therese, who grew up in Normandy, was visiting there. The two fell in love and Luigi followed Marie-Therese back to France, arriving in 1957. Luigi found work as a bricklayer and would eventually build the family home in Colombes, a suburb of Paris. Together the family usually spent the summer in Scerni, Italy, Luigi's native village in Abruzzi.

Philippe had no exposure to ice skating in his early childhood and had as his hero The Six Million Dollar Man rather than the figure skaters of that era. However, Colombes boasts a very good range of sports facilities : a tennis club, a swimming pool , several stadia ... and a ice rink. The town was the site of numerous events during the Paris Olympic Games of 1924 and it is the Colombes stadium in which the final race in the film ‘Chariots of Fire' takes place. Consequently, there is a high level of interest in sports and an awareness of the town's place in the history of the Olympic movement.

As a young child, Philippe practiced the sports of swimming and trampoline. His spare time was thus already occupied in 1979 when his grade school class began a series of weekly ice skating lessons at the Colombes rink. He was delighted with the sport and pleased by the fact that he seemed to be a natural while his classmates stumbled and fell. It was during one of these very first lessons that the resident instructor Andre Brunet noticed the "sassy little urchin, completely happy to be there and so at ease on skates." He arranged with the school and Philippe's parents that the boy should have skating lessons more often, eventually every morning.

During Philippe's early days on the ice, he was approached to join the hockey team instead of the figure skating section. At this time also, it became clear that too many sports were competing for his limited free time. His mother insisted that he make a choice. Though at that time, he did not like the "artistic" side of figure skating, he loved the speed and the feeling of being able to jump and turn in the air. In addition, he appreciated Andre Brunet's early confidence in him. The choice was easy.

The expense of skating lessons created some difficulty for a family with three other children. Philippe felt a bit "privileged" compared to his older siblings and conscious of the budget, he broke into a sporting goods store and stole his first pair of skates, for which his mother later paid from her salary as an accountant. Invited to Font-Romeu in the Pyrenees for his first national summer training session, Philippe was accompanied by his mother and siblings. The family stayed in a folding tent at the municipal camp ground. A session of summer training at Font-Romeu became an annual event for Philippe and it was here that he has also prepared for mid-winter competitions, including the 1995 World Championships.

Philippe was soon competing with success on the national level and some support for his training was given by the French Federation of Ice Sports (FFSG). At ten years old, he was offered a place at INSEP, a national training facility for various sports on the other side of Paris. Accepting this offer would have meant either a long daily commute by train or living on campus, as do many aspiring athletes even at that young age. It would also have meant leaving behind Andre Brunet as his coach. Philippe declined the appointment, an act that he feels created lasting resentment within the FFSG at his lack of cooperation.

Off the ice, Philippe continued his schooling by correspondence course and as part of a special sport/study program. However, in what would be his junior high school years, he rejoined his peers at a "normal" school. In this setting, he became quite uncommunicative about his involvement with figure skating, fearing to be considered a sissy. There was no doubt in his mind that the technical aspects of figure skating were as demanding as those of any sport, but the choreography and artistic gestures embarrassed him. He began to reconcile these conflicts by creating characters on ice and found the presentation aspects easier to tolerate in this form. In addition, the spectators seemed to enjoy his skating more, he noticed. One of his earliest theme programs mimicked a fight between cowboys and Indians.

The demands of training and competition interfered with Philippe's studies and he left school at sixteen, apparently with neither regret nor the intention to return.

Philippe's results in novice and junior competition can be read elsewhere on this site. (See Results) It must be remembered that at the time, school figures were still a required component of competition. He made steady progress internationally and at sixteen, was chosen to perform with other young French skaters during the closing ceremony at the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary. This appearance was part of the performance orchestrated by the next Winter Olympic city, Albertville France. In four years, Philippe would be 20 years old, an ideal age for an Olympic debut. He had been thrilled to witness the historic Battle of the Brians in Calgary and now eagerly looked forward to competing himself in 1992 in his own country.

Philippe moved closer to this goal in the intervening years, graduating from junior to senior competition in 1990. Natacha Dabbadie became his choreographer and although Philippe was initially resistant to her ideas, he gradually conceded that he needed to refine his artistic expression on the ice. Together the team began to create the kind of programs that would become his hallmark. When the 1991-92 Olympic season began, Philippe was skating his long program to music from the movie ‘Conan the Barbarian' dressed in a startling costume seemingly made of leather and fur. The program was highly entertaining for the audience even as it offered the technical difficulties required. In August, he won the St. Gervais Cup and looked forward to a successful season, to be crowned by competing at the Olympic Games in Albertville.

But in October 91, Philippe broke his foot in a minor motorcycle accident. The FFSG had taken a dim view of his motorcycle riding and levied a large fine as punishment. After a month of recuperation, he entered the French National Championship (held in his home rink of Colombes that year), secure in the knowledge that he had been pre-selected for the Olympics. But here, he finished fifth and still insists that he should have been placed second. He was removed from the 92 Olympic team.



That February, he watched as both French men selected to the Olympics finished out of the top ten in Albertville. A month later, after skating a long program that thrilled the audience, Philippe finished 9th at the World Championships in Oakland, a result that he feels proved his right to have been an Olympic selection.

As painful as his Olympic disappointment had been, it must have been some comfort to realize that the next Olympics would be held in only two years, rather than the usual four. Over the next two years, Philippe would work toward building a series of results and a degree of popularity that would render impossible his exclusion from the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic team.



These were an important two years in his personal life as well because in 1992, he met ballet dancer Olivia Darmon whom he would later marry. He first saw her at the Colombes rink where she was auditioning for a troupe that Natacha Dabbadie was forming. "As soon as I saw her, I knew that she would be my wife," he later recalled. Olivia had no such presentiments and refused to even go out with him, having heard he had a reputation for fickleness. He eventually persuaded her and they were married six years later. During those years, Olivia worked as a choreographer for an ice ballet troupe at the Asnieres rink, leading ‘Les Tziganes' to victory in1998 at the first French Ice Ballet Championships.



However, in the years between Albertville and Lillehammer, Philippe still lived at home. When not on the ice, he rode and repaired motorcycles, often with his brother Laurent, now a mechanic. He put together large jigsaw puzzles on a table specially set up for this purpose in the attic. Every winter, he went skiing, another activity frowned on by the FFSG and in summer, he played tennis and golf.

Demand for Philippe's participation in tours and exhibitions was constantly increasing in Europe, outstripping his international ranking itself. After a crowd-pleasing skate and a fifth-place finish at the 1993 World Championships, he was invited to the latter part of the Tom Collins Tour of Olympic and World Champions in the United States, in spite of the fact that he had never even won the French championship. Although he was a relative unknown to the general public, his performances were received with enthusiasm, due to his innate showmanship. For several years, he had incorporated three particularly crowd-pleasing elements into his exhibitions. The first two were technical : a series of rapid hops across the ice taught to him by Natacha Dabbadie and a seated cross-legged spin of his own invention, the Candeloro Spin. The third element was the almost-invariable removal of his shirt, an aspect which to this day annoys his detractors, delights the general public, and is dear to the heart of his particular fans.

For the Olympic season, 93-94, Philippe chose to skate both his short and long programs to music from ‘The Godfather'. It was an innovation to skate both programs with a single unifying theme and a risk to sympathetically depict an anti-hero, but the judges responded with encouraging results that autumn and spectators loved the programs.

In February 1994, Philippe arrived in Lillehammer as the new French champion. It was considered likely that he would skate well enough to finish somewhere in the middle of the top ten, but there were a host of medal favorites. On his twenty-second birthday, though, Philippe skated a clean, entertaining short program and two days later, skated the ‘Godfather' long program brilliantly to win the bronze medal.

Although France also won silver medals in Lillehammer, Philippe's Olympic experience was repeatedly referred to in the press as "France's most beautiful medal". He was asked to carry the flag in the closing ceremony and returned home to a hero's welcome and a blizzard of publicity. From having been an item in the sports pages, he was thrust into a world of glossy magazine articles, appearances in prime-time television shows, and being recognized everywhere. These distractions did not deter him from winning a silver medal at the 1994 World Championship in Japan, where he now enjoyed star status.

Philippe was often asked in France why he didn't go professional at this point, since he appeared to get so much enjoyment from exhibition skating. He replied that he was too young to consider that and was looking forward to competition leading to the Nagano Games in 1998 where he planned to win another medal. The four intervening years proved to be difficult ones however. Although Philippe's popularity as an exhibition skater increased, his competitive results began to diminish and he was hampered by other problems.

For the 94-95 season, Philippe chose to skate sequels to the popular Godfather programs. These programs were not as well-received as the originals and some of his performances did not rise to the level of the previous year. He did succeed in winning a bronze medal at the 1995 World Champions with a stirring performance and set off on the post-season exhibition tours.

During one of these tours, Philippe injured his ankle, an incident that at first appeared to be minor. The pain came and went unpredictably, at times seeming to have been cured by calcium injections and other therapies. Later, Philippe stated that skating in pain was "the biggest mistake of my career."

The next years followed a pattern. Each season got off to a late start with an early competition forfeited due to injury, initially using the programs from the previous year and changing to the new programs mid-season. These new programs, all exciting and innovative in their way, did not meet with the acclaim the original Godfather programs had enjoyed. At the World Championships in 1996, Philippe skated a disastrous short program and found himself in sixteenth place. The next day, skating for his career and to preserve his Olympic hopes, he earned a standing ovation from the crowd with the humorous ‘Lucky Luke' program and vaulted up to a ninth place finish. After Worlds, it was discovered that the intermittent ankle pain had been caused by loose bone chips and these were surgically removed in May 1996.

As Philippe recovered from his surgery in summer and fall of 1996, there were problems off the ice as well. The FFSG was in financial difficulty and had failed to pay skaters prize money from competitions as well as fees earned in exhibition. Natacha Dabbadie could not negotiate a satisfactory contract with the FFSG and as a consequence, she was lost to Philippe as a choreographer. His programs after this were to be the combined work of several choreographers.

Looking on the bright side, Philippe's ankle improved, he began collaborating with composer Maxime Rodriguez on original program music, and he and Olivia moved into a house of their own in the Paris suburbs, acquiring a Maltese puppy named Tutti. Philippe's showmanship and popularity in exhibition skating were undiminished and he had the unwavering support of his coach and his physical trainer Jacques Dechoux, and a host of fans who loved him for his skating itself rather than his results.

As expected in the normal course of events, he now faced increasing competition for the French title even as his relations with the FFSG became increasingly strained. When he re-injured his ankle as the 96-97 season was reaching its close, he forfeited his place at the 1997 World Championships. The French skaters who were sent both finished out of the top ten, allowing France to send only one entrant to the Nagano Olympics men's figure skating competition the following year.

The Olympic season of 97-98 began in a strained atmosphere. Philippe was dismayed to find himself not assigned by the FFSG to the NHK Trophy which was to take place in Nagano's White Ring, the future Olympic venue. His new long program was not ready and Philippe began the season skating the previous year's Napoleon program. He stated that some programs merely took longer to prepare than others, but that any delay in presenting the new one would be worth the wait. There was some skepticism in the French sportspress about how prepared he was for the Olympics and whether he still had the desire necessary to compete. Some hinted that his best days were behind him.

In December, he withdrew from French Nationals, suffering from ‘flu and lost his French Champion's title. FFSG selection committee considered not sending him to the 1998 European Championships in January. To have missed the opportunity to debut his new program in competition at Europeans in addition to heading for the Olympics without a national champion's title would have been an insurmountable handicap.

In the end, he was sent to Europeans, where he skated a flawed short, but unveiled his new long program with an enthralling performance, receiving the first perfect 6.0 mark of his international career. The new program was in the character of d'Artagnan from ‘The Three Musketeers', an idea that he had been saving for four years. This captivating combination of technical elements and entertainment, climaxed by a mimed sword fight was pleasing to both judge and spectator, his most acclaimed program since the Godfather four years before.

With the powerful tailwind of Europeans at his back, Philippe's Olympic selection was a foregone conclusion. He was asked to carry the French flag at the opening ceremonies.

In spite of the artistic zenith that the d'Artagnan program represented, Philippe was generally ruled-out on technical grounds from most predictions of the likely medal contenders. Several of the top competitors had quadruple toe loops in their arsenals. Although Philippe had done these and also the quadruple Lutz in the years prior to Lillehammer, he had never attempted one in competition and now relied on a balance of artistic and technical marks. Still, he approached the competition in Nagano with apparent confidence, stating that you don't go to the Olympics unless you have the intention of winning a medal.

In Nagano, Philippe greeted fans, signed autographs, was constantly interviewed, and helped create a cheerful ambiance within the French team, all with little outward sign of the enormous pressure Olympic competition can bring to bear on an athlete. "They call him a dilettante because he knows how to relax and keep things in proportion," remarked his coach Andre Brunet, "But he's an exceptional athlete and is very sensitive to what others say about him. He works by feelings. That's difficult to handle. All you can do is have faith in him."

After skating a solid short on February 12th, Philippe was in fifth position, a placement of vital importance, since it would allow him to skate in the last group of six on the final night. Only those who skate in the last group can realistically hope to win a medal.

On the evening of St.Valentine's Day, Philippe took his starting position on the ice, dressed as d'Artagnan. The sword he wielded was invisible, but would prove none the less effective. The first major difficulty, a combination jump, was executed to perfection. He said later that having passed this hurdle, he reminded himself to relax and have fun "and that's what I did." The music of d'Artagnan filled the arena with the sounds of birdsong, slashing swords, and the dying sigh of a woman. This performance was more than a four and a half minute string of technical difficulties. British television commentator Chris Howarth remarked "That program will go down in history. I have never seen anything like it."

The next day, Jere Longman wrote in the New York Times "Candeloro gave the most vibrant and ambitious performance of the evening ... His sword-fighting showmanship brought screams and wild applause from the audience at White Ring ...Three days shy of his 26th birthday ... he rediscovered the theatricality that made him so promising and entertaining four years ago in Lillehammer, Norway." Sonja Springs of the London Times wrote "But though the blonde [Ilya] Kulik soared and swooped over the ice... the star of the evening was Philippe Candeloro of France ... his acting on the ice was worthy of an Oscar, and his country's own award of 6.0 for presentation was not out of place."

To the delight of the crowd, this performance was awarded with marks that gave Philippe second place in the long program itself and lifted him to his second Olympic bronze medal. Scott Hamilton commented simply "I didn't think he could top the Godfather. He did."

A week later, Philippe skated d'Artagnan at the Olympic figure skating exhibition and as he sheathed his sword to the final notes of the music, an amateur career of such light and shadow came to end. Moments later, he knelt and kissed the ice.

Since Nagano, Philippe skates as a professional and is concentrating with a few exceptions on purely professional competitions, rather than pro/ams. In North America he tours with Champions on Ice and The Elvis Tour and has appeared in several of the Starskates exhibition series. Intending to promote professional skating in Europe, he has purchased portable ice and has toured France with his own company. He married Olivia in September 1998 and the couple had their first child, Luna in April 2000. Philippe has suggested a number of plans for the more distant future. These vary from the intention to reduce his tour schedule after 2001 and his plan to skate professionally as long as possible. This last contrasts with is previous announced intention to skate as a professional for only four years, returning at the end of that period to begin coaching along side his own coach Andre Brunet. His fans are not partial to this possibility and hope he opts to skate for many years to come.