Getty Kaetlyn Osmond competes in the Ladies Free Skate during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships.
Kaetlyn Osmond has already made her mark on the 2018 Winter Olympics. Osmond and Team Canada won gold in the team figure skating event in PyeongChang. Osmond’s outstanding performance in the women’s short program helped push the Canadiens over the top.
“It’s an experience that we’ll be thinking about for a long time,” Kaetlyn’s proud father Jeff Osmond said in an interview with Here and Now’s Debbie Cooper. Kaetlyn’s parents will continue to cheer her on when the figure skating competition continues on Feb. 21 in PyeongChang.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Kaetlyn’s Parents Are With Her At The Olympics
Her parents, Jeff and Jackie Osmond, were both at the arena to see Kaetlyn’s golden performance in the team event. They have continued to stay with her Pyeongchang. “It’s absolutely amazing. We’re so ecstatic, so happy and so proud of her,” Jackie Osmond told CBC after the medal ceremony.
Jeff Osmond added: “I pretty much just sit down and take it all in. It’s so nice to see finally that she does what she can do in practice.” Osmond’s parents have supported Kaetlyn through some tough times over the last few years, and helped her recover from a serious injury. Kaetlyn’s mother was nervous watching her skate in PyeongChang: “For me it was a lot of shaking, and trying to stay calm myself,” she told CBC. “I believe if I stay calm, I send vibes to her to help keep her calm. When it was over, just to see her expression, it just made me feel so happy.”
It’s unsure if Kaetlyn has a significant other with her in PyeongChang. In 2015 she posted an Instagram photo of herself and a guy named Trey on a boat together. The caption read: “Happy 20th birthday to the best boyfriend!”. However Trey has not appeared in any of Kaetlyn’s recent Instagram posts. Kaetlyn has since posted pictures of herself on dates.
2. Kaetlyn Began Figure Skating When She Was 3
According to her Team Canada bio, Kaetlyn started skating when she was two years old, following in the footsteps of her older sister Natasha. Her bio also says: “During the late 1990s her family travelled to Montreal during the summers so that Natasha could train.”
While training with her older sister in Montreal, Kaetlyn unlocked her figure skating potential. According to her Olympic bio, Katelyn was born in Newfoundland but moved to Montreal at agr seven. Her bio added: “After four years in Montreal, the family moved to Alberta as they believed there were better skating facilities located in the province.
3. Kaetlyn Has Had Several Setbacks Due To Injury
According to her Team Canada bio: “Osmond then missed the entire 2014-15 season with a broken right fibula that required two surgeries to first implant and then remove a plate and seven screws. She spent the 2015-16 season re-learning how to compete.”
The support of Kaetelyn’s parents was a big catalyst for her recovery. “When she broke her leg that time, and I watched her get back on the ice for the first day…she skated as if she was just a two-year-old starting to skate again,” Jackie Osmond told CBC. “I didn’t think I’d ever, ever see the day that she’d even skate, let alone be on the world’s stage.”
4. Kaetlyn Will Continue To Skate After The Olympics
Kaetlyn is set to return to Canada after the 2018 Winter Olympics and will skate at the Silver Blades Skating Club’s annual show in April, according to CBC. She will also perform at an ice show in Grand Falls-Windsor the following night.
According to her Olympic bio, Osmond almost gave up on figure skating entirely following an ankle injury in 2014. “For that entire year I was convinced that I was never competing again,” she said. After struggling to rehab the injury in 2015, Kaetlyn’s frustrations continued. “It took me a while, obviously, but by the end of the year I was like: ‘I’m not going to keep training like this if I’m going to compete and do badly’. So, I kind of woke myself up and said: ‘Okay, if I’m going to keep training then I’m going to be good’. And that’s been my mentality the entire time,” Osmond said.
5. Kaetlyn Loves Animals And Owns a Cockapoo
Osmond is an avid dog-lover and is the proud owner of a cockapoo. The Regina-Leader Post reported: “Her name is Rasquette, because she’s a rascal. Because she’s a girl, I called her a lady Rasquette. I actually bought her on my way to worlds this year. I had it in my brain that I needed a dog and I couldn’t think of anything else, so on my way to worlds, I thought I needed to have a dog or I wouldn’t be able to focus on the competition.”
According to Kaetlyn’s Team Canada bio she also loves reading and binge-watching TV shows on Netflix. She is also studying communications at Athabasca, an online Canadian college. You can read more about Kaetlyn here.