New Skates

I purchased new skates on 25 January (my birthday present to myself, apparently!)

I'd been researching them for a while. They are a serious upgrade from the pair I wear now, in both boot and blade. And they cost a freekin' mint. Ka-ching.

Harlick Competitor Plus boots...oh, look, shiny! http://www.rainbosports.com/shop/site/product.cfm?id=4AC5734C-475A-BAC0-59712EF58C9F658B

But mine have brass hooks. Also, they cost more than what you see here, because mine are semi-custom, with one width at the heel and another at the front.

And blades, Coronation Ace. Very, very shiny: http://www.rainbosports.com/shop/site/product.cfm?id=4AC57501-475A-BAC0-554D8706390CFB7F

Add in set up, sealing, NY's high tax rate, and...$$$$

Ice Dance clinic

On 28 January, one of my skating clubs held an ice dance clinic with Inese Bucevica and two of her students, Ilana Morse and Justin Morrow. Ilana and Justin are a new team, although each skater has had success with past partners. Inese is a four-time Latvian ice dance champion and has her Ballet Masters Degree in Figure Skating from the Moscow School of Performing Arts. She coaches National, World and Olympic skaters and, needless to say, she really knew her stuff.

The clinic was more sparcely attended than the one run by Oleg and Larisa the previous Sunday, and I believe that the lower attendance was for several reasons:

1) Many local skaters do synchro, and the local synchro teams were competing at Easterns that weekend
2) It's ice dance, which tends to be less popular than other forms of figure skating in the US
3) It was Saturday, which is the Jewish sabbath, and the rink is in a heavily orthodox area.

Which simply meant that I got more time with the coaches!

The clinic was divided into two sections. Inese coached, and Ilana and Justin helped her. The first section covered basic ice dance skills, such as chasses, as well as dance-related warm up moves, like inside swingrolls, inside 3-turns, arm movement, timing, etc. The second section focused on learning the preliminary set pattern USFS ice dances - we went through the basics of the Dutch Waltz, the Nasty Canasty (ahem...Canasta Tango) and the very beginning of the Swing Dance. Of course, I jumped right up when Inese asked if anyone wanted to partners with Justin - I love skating with men who can really partner. One of my friends later told me that, while Justin and I were dancing, Inese kept saying, "Good, good." Grins!

For each dance, Inese made Ilana and Justin do a demo of the dance first - of course, they'd spend the day before relearning these basic dances, which neither of them have done in years. At the end, they demo'd their CD for next year's nationals, which was the...I forget. What's the CD for Novice Nationals next year? Ravensburger Waltz? It was some sort of Waltz. Sorry.

Skating clinic with Makarov and Selezneva

On 22 January one of my skating clubs had a clinic with Oleg Makarov and Larisa Selezneva, Olympic, World, and European Champion figure skaters. Oleg and Larisa were 1984 Olympic Pairs Bronze Medalists,1985 World Silver Medalists, 1987 & 1989 European Gold Medalists, and five-time Soviet National Gold Medalists. They now coach.

The clinic was fabulous and packed with skaters of all levels and ages. Oleg focused on moves, and so I stuck with him as we moved from beginner (well, what HE thinks of as beginner...whooh!) to intermediate moves, and Larisa focused on jumps and spins.

Oleg split the time in his clinics between those of us who had skating skills, and those who were at a more beginning level. He'd get us more advanced skaters working on something, then show something related, but more basic, to the beginners.

We did some fabulous new stuff that was very much related to compulsory figures, and some things I was familiar with (and yet can't yet do), like backwards crossrolls. A few times, Oleg took me by the hand and helped me through certain moves. Of course, things were a lot easier with him there!

Oleg told us stories of how his coach used to make him work on the basics even when he was training for Worlds - hours long sessions of just forward and backward crossovers, for example, in a quest for strength, power and flow. He also talked about the early-morning hours he spent doing patch practice for compulsory figures. He misses the figures, and gave examples of how their loss has impacted the skating of his students and his own coaching. He said that he now has to struggle to explain and teach things like edges to his students - things that used to simply become rote with the practice of figures.

At the end of the clinic, some of Oleg and Larisa's students did their programs. Then, as the piece de resistance, Oleg and Larisa did a pairs move - he picked her up and spun her, platter style, on top of his head. Her belly was on his head, she put her arms and legs out like a star, he spun her while he was spinning in the opposite direction below her. Not bad, as he said, for people "of our age" - and in my opinion, really fabulous.