What to know for the figure skating world championships in Montreal

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.

The World Figure Skating Championships begin Wednesday at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the first Canadian city to host the event since London, Ont., in 2013.

That was back during the golden age of Canadian figure skating, and the host country won a medal of each colour in London. Patrick Chan led the way, capturing his third consecutive men's gold and what would turn out to be the last of his six career medals at the worlds. Ice dance superstars Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir settled for silver, while Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford took bronze in the pairs event.

Eleven years later, the good times are long gone. Canada's decline began shortly after the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, where Virtue and Moir won their final ice dance title and led Canada to gold in the team event as the country captured a world-leading four medals.

Since the end of that season, Canadian figure skaters have won just three medals at the world championships — all bronze — and they were shut out at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. The drop-off is especially stark in the singles events, where no Canadian has reached a major podium since Kaetlyn Osmond won the women's gold at the depleted post-Olympic worlds in 2018. The dearth of major medals across all disciplines looks even worse given that skating superpower Russia has been banned since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Canada's singles struggles are likely to continue this week as none of its three solo entries are considered podium contenders. Wesley Chiu, who turns 19 on Wednesday, is making his worlds debut while Roman Sadovsky and Madeline Schizas