The last few days before skater Liam Dougherty leaves for Europe have been hectic – with the university student scrambling to finish up his final school work before being whisked off to tour Switzerland and France.

"We're heading out tomorrow – I've spent the last few hours madly finishing off my last term paper for university – and going to spend three weeks touring around France and Switzerland,” said Dougherty.

The former Yukoner just finished up two days in Toronto with Le Patin Libre, a skating group that is hoping to break barriers in the skating world.

"Le Patin Libre is a group of former competitive skaters, and some skaters who have never competed, who are attempting to push figure skating into a more artistic, less ‘kitschy' realm,” said Dougherty.

"We want to do two things; focus on the artistry of skating as we feel that it's much closer to being a pure art than a sport, and also to make figure skating correspond more closely to our tastes.”

That also means Dougherty has been able to say good-bye to the traditional skating get up, and try to appeal to a different audience.

"That is, no spandex, no sparkles, and no more trying to please middle-aged women,” said Dougherty. "Ideally we'd like to appeal to our peers, but, with the reputation that figure skating has, it's a tough battle.”

It's a battle that Dougherty knows all too much about. He began skating in Whitehorse when he was eight-years-old at Takhini Arena and the Stan McGowan Arena as part of the Whitehorse Skating Club, which no longer exists.

Dougherty moved to Montreal when he was 13 to further his career, and competed as an ice-dancer until last year, when he found himself disenchanted with the skating world.

"I had my ups and downs, the ups being my 2003 Junior Canadian Ice Dance Champion title, the various international events that I competed in and being a member of the Senior National Team, and the downs being bad relationships with my partners, endless searches for those partners and disillusionment and frustration in the face of many, many things,” Dougherty said.

He found himself exhausted of the competitive skating scene, and was looking for a different challenge that allowed him to keep skating.

"I stopped competing last year, fed up with the politics, crooked judging, and the constant, rigid training that's demanded of an elite athlete,” he said. "I had competed for twelve years at that level and to be honest I was, and still am, pretty burnt out.”

This is why Dougherty found himself drawn to the skating troupe.

"I got involved with Le Patin Libre about four years ago while I was still competing, and part of my motivation for joining the troupe was that it seemed like a perfect outlet for my dissatisfaction with the constraints of the competitive system,” Dougherty said.

Le Patin Libre is taking its first tour of Europe, and Dougherty is looking forward to the trip.

"As it is our first time in Europe as a troupe I'm looking forward to the experience,” he said.

Before setting off, the group did a two day stop in Toronto at a winter festival, Dougherty said.

"Toronto was a lot of fun, I haven't spent any time in downtown Toronto for a number of years and it was nice to skate in the shadow of the CN Tower in front of hundreds of spectators.”