Skating Fridays

ISU Adult skating competition recap (part 2)

With the singles event now behind me, I shifted my mind to my next and final event – adult pairs. There were only 2 teams in the event, including us, but the last time we skated against this Canadian team, they bested us. The Canadians had a fun Elton John medley that wooed the judges and audience, and their performance was very memorable. Ours was… not. Fast forward to today.

Our elements felt pretty solid overall, and my main focus area during our practices all season was to improve our performance score. We earned a low performance score in 2023, and I really wanted to sell this program. I told my partner to look at the judges as much as possible and to show them how much fun we were having (even if we were faking it).

When our score was announced, I was surprised to hear that it was over 24 points! In 2023, we only scored 22 points and change. I was already excited about this improvement. After the Canadians skated, I wasn’t sure how the results would look, and much to my surprise and excitement, we won!

Before I wrap up this post though, I wanted to share a funny moment we had at the end of our program. After my partner and I had taken our final bows, I gently pushed him (note: this was choreographed so he knew this was happening. However, nobody else other than the 2 of us knew what was going on.). He fell, and I dragged him off the ice by his blades:

The audience loved every second of this shenanigan. Apparently the judges did too. A friend of mine said that the officials were cackling at this moment, and one judge had to nudge another one to pay attention to the antics we were pulling. Don’t worry – I did check with an unnamed event organizer to ensure that this was legal to do. I was told that the judges would be “pencils down” as soon as we took our bows, so anything that happened afterwards would be off the record.

When my partner and I compete again, we’ll need to alter our program back to the requirements for US rules. It will be slightly longer and contain more elements. Hopefully we can still keep it fun and entertaining!

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