As figure skater Patrick Chan retires, he’s struggling to stick the landing

Patrick Chan is coming back down to Earth. For more than 15 years, he’s leaped, twizzled, spun and soared to astonishing heights: winning multiple world championships and Olympic medals on behalf of Canada. In 2018, he retired from international competition but kept entertaining his fans on the show circuit. Now, even that part of his life is coming to an end. On Thursday night in Moncton, he began his farewell tour of Stars on Ice, which will travel to 10 more cities across Canada and close in Victoria on May 16. Then, Chan, 33, will go home to Vancouver, where he lives with his wife, skater Elizabeth Putnam, whom he married in 2020, and their 2 1/2-year-old son, Oliver – they’re expecting another child later this year – and clock in for work in his first year as a wealth-planning intern at a local wealth-management firm. Already, one post-skating career for which he had high hopes, as a commercial realtor, didn’t pan out. It has all, he admits, been quite an adjustment.When were you happiest?The first few years after my retirement from competitive skating – talk about a high, living on cloud nine, because I was with the best Canadian figure skating team in probably decades, probably since the Elvis and Kurt era – you know, with Tessa and Scott, and Eric and Meagan. We had a wonderful time, touring Canada, doing shows in Japan and in Korea. Just kind of living our best days.