Canadian skater Chan believes it's his time for world title

Canada's Patrick Chan believes he's ready to improve on his two world silver medals. Canada's Patrick Chan believes he's ready to improve on his two world silver medals when the relocated world championships take place in Russia next week. "I really want to come home with a gold medal from Worlds. I feel like

it's time," said Chan from his training base in Colorado. "I feel really prepared and in good shape to do it, and I don't see why it can't be done." Chan, whose superb season included Grand Prix Finals gold, said there will be plenty of other skaters deserving of the favourite tag at the worlds, which will be held in Moscow from April 25 to May 1 after being moved from Tokyo in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that struck northeast Japan.
"Having such a great season, of course it puts me in that position of being a favourite, but you can't forget the other skaters. I'm not the only favourite there. "There's tons of skaters including all the skaters from Japan who, I believe, will be more motivated than ever to do what they do and skate for their country," the 20-year-old said.

In addition to the Japanese frontrunners, which include reigning world titleholder Daisuke Takahashi and the resurgent Nobunari Oda, Chan put Frenchman Brian Joubert and Czech Tomas Verner on his list of top contenders.
"I am pretty happy to be in this position because I know that I'm not the only one bearing the weight (of expectations)," Chan noted. After a disappointing 2010 campaign which saw Chan settle for fifth at his home Olympics, the affable athlete roared back this season, claiming gold at the Grand Prix Final ahead of his arch-rivals with a dominating, best-of-season score of 259.75.

A month later at his national championships in January, Chan delivered jaw-dropping performances that featured three picture-perfect quadruple jumps - one in the short program and two in the long. He has no doubt he can repeat that showing in Russia, despite the challenge to maintain peak conditioning a month longer than expected. Mental toughness, Chan predicted, will be a bigger factor than ever in deciding the outcome. While Chan now whips off the four-revolution jump like it was a basic skating skill, he did not include that jump in his programs in previous seasons, arguing it was not a necessity to win world and Olympic titles.

Russian quad-master Evgeni Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic champion who settled for silver in Vancouver last year, vehemently disagreed with that notion. He and Chan exchanged verbal jabs on the subject at the 2010 Games.
Chan said it won't faze him if Plushenko is in the audience for the men's competition in Moscow or if he again returns to competition to take another shot at an Olympic title in Sochi in 2014.
"I'm always excited to have new people come and compete," Chan said. As for skating under Plushenko's watchful eye, he added "My main focus is to do what I have to do when I get on the ice.  As a skater, as an athlete you don't focus on the audience. I'm just going to go and focus on my quads and my triple Axels."With the extra month of training time ahead of the world championships, Chan said he has been able to hone his programs to the point that his skating has "become second nature." "It has become a real joy to skate," he said.