10,000-plus (manic) hours of skating

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Experts have often said that it takes a certain number of hours to truly develop world-class expertise in particular sports and other walks of life.

The assertion had 24-year-old Vaughn Chipeur of Canada running the numbers.

‘They did this study a while ago that it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated training to master technique whether it would be a different sport, like running sports, or sliding sports or anything like that, at an Olympic, world-type level,’ he said this afternoon in the mixed zone at Staples Center after completing his short program, receiving a score of 70.45, off his season-best 72.70.

‘I sat down with my sports psychologist and I told her. And she said, ‘Let’s figure out how many hours you’ve skated.’ So we started from age 10 till now and it worked out to about 15,000 hours. We put the time in. You’ve just really got to pound it out.

‘You’ve got to be at the rink every day and you just have to build and build and build. Some days you just can’t discipline yourself. It’s hard training every day. You have to find ways to punch through it and get back on your feet.’

Ten-thousand-plus hours. Somewhere singer Natalie Merchant, formerly of 10,000 Maniacs, would be proud.

-- Lisa Dillman