Season Start 07/08

This season has been a huge change for us, not only have we moved our primary training centre to the Axel club in Torun Poland but we also have two new coaches. Mariusz and Dorota Siudek, who have attained various Medals at Grand Prix’s, European and World Championships. Work is tough but we can see big improvements and really enjoying the training too. Torun is a medieval town with big city walls, old churches, Cathedrals and lovely cafes. You should visit some time!

Our season started in Chicago straight after our week holiday in Disneyland Florida to see our good friend Chris Howarth. As well as being a top class coach, head of figure skating at the Glacier rink near Chicago and ex British champion, he also does the commentary for us on Eurosport. We had two weeks on trying to improve our weakest element, the side by side jump. He was great, looked after us and gave us some good stuff to work on this season. After the first week with Chris we couldn’t even walk up or down stairs, we looked so pathetic it was funny and even Chris laughed at us. It was great, most days we’d have the ice to ourselves and loved Chris’s teaching style. We stayed with a lovely lady called Kim who lived in a huge Mansion, but I suppose she had to having 5 kids although the 3rd and 4th eldest were at Chicago University at the time. The house had a cinema room in it which was fantastic to relax in after a long day and a swimming pool out back with hot tub.

Next on the list was a training school in Nottingham with Vera Vandecaveye. Currently Kevin Van Der Perren and British ladies champion Jenna McCorkell call her coach. We had yet another weeks’ work on jumps. She was also a great help to me and I landed consistently triple toe for the first time ever. Often its been on/off but she got some exercises that made it spot on. I liked Vera’s style and personality, throughout our season she’s been one of the first to wish us luck and congratulate us after a performance.

We then went Germany very last minute to see Tracey Solomon in Oberstdorf to choreograph our long programme. She did very well to fit us in as we’d left it so late but we got there and looked after us as well as ever. We decided to skate to a Bond melody which Tracey definitely had the flair for it and we wanted it to be a real achievement. We started at 7am and finished at 9am with Tracey but then had an hour in the evening to work it all out. There isn’t much or anything to do in Oberstdorf if its not snowing, just pretty scenery which for an athlete keeps you very focused and as Torvill and Dean famously said it was one of the main reasons for moving there.

British Olympic Association has its winter Olympic centre in Austria situated near the small town of Loafer, so our federation organized a pre season off ice camp to improve morale and basic strength of our British squad. It felt more like a holiday rather than the previous year when it was a real tough challenge.

Robin Cousins was originally our first choice of choreographer but had a conflict of schedule. Later in the year he managed to find some time away from his work to come and clean up our long programme in Blackburn. He was great and such an icon, we really enjoyed ourselves. He choreographs for Holiday On Ice, as well as being an Olympic gold medallist so we were so happy that he found time to help us. It was only 4 days we worked together but we worked intensely and filmed it so we didn’t forget any of the ideas or thoughts behind our movements. We felt a lot more confident in the programme after working with Robin, it was a real pleasure.