Pelletier, Sale Hit ‘Tonight Show’
If Hollywood is knocking, Canadian pairs skaters David Pelletier and Jamie Sale are listening.
The pair were adjusting nicely to their first taste of Hollywood-style celebrity on Monday. They were flown by chartered jet from Salt Lake City to the Burbank Airport--exhausted, they slept the hour-and-a-half trip--then whisked by stretch limo to NBC Studios to tape “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”
During their eight-minute appearance, they bantered with Leno and kibitzed, during the commercial break, with fellow guest Charlie Sheen.
Sale, 24, and Pelletier, 27, had floundered competitively before they started skating with each other in 1998, and they quickly realized their potential.
“We were skating for the right reasons. We were skating to be the top team in the world, not to be fifth or sixth,” Pelletier said.
“You kind of get hungry for it,” said Sale, who wore black leather pants on the Leno show.
Dating two years, they live together but work at separating personal lives from professional lives. “You don’t bring on-ice problems home--and vice versa,” Pelletier told Leno during the show.
Earlier in the day in Salt Lake City, skating leaders were discussing ways to reform the judging process that many critics say is ripe for abuse. That system has been under heavy scrutiny since a French judge said she had been pressured to vote a certain way before casting her vote Monday night to favor Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze over the Canadians.
The judge has since been suspended and an investigation continues.
One of the reforms proposed Monday would scrap the traditional 6.0 score in place of a scoring system based on points for the difficulty and execution of jumps and other elements. Changes could also include expanding judging panels from nine to 14, but only use seven randomly selected scores.
But Pelletier and Sale said they didn’t have enough information on proposed reforms to comment.
“Our coach ... always told us our job is on the ice. After that, you have no control,” Sale said. Besides, she added “They never asked skaters in the first place if the system now is OK.”
Their business manager, Craig Fenech, estimates he’s received about 1,500 phone calls on his cell phone since last Tuesday, the day after his clients’ silver-then-gold medal performance. Two calls Monday were about possible made-for-TV movies.
So the pair is reconsidering its options.
“We had a skating plan--to go to Worlds and compete--but sometimes plans change,” said Pelletier, sipping the energy drink Red Bull in the limo returning him and Sale to the airport so they can fly back to Salt Lake.
He laughs at the notion that they are going Hollywood.
“We’re figure skaters. I don’t have the pretension to be a movie star. I speak French. My English is so-so. But, hey, if the door opens and I like doing it, I might give it a shot.”
