Team Italy's comments in Stockholm

LADIES

MICOL CRISTINI

I could have definitely done better today, I was quite nervous during my performance. It's ok anyway, I fought throughout the program, I am just sorry for the fall on the Salchow, but given those have been my first European Championships I am satisfied overall.

I didn't expect to end up on the podium at the National Championships, although I came to Torino extremely ready to skate in the competition at my best. My only regret there was singling the Loop: I was not able to execute it as a Triple because I had changed my skates not long before the event and I was not able to fully feel the starting edge of that jump. I could have definitely landed it, but it's ok, that's the way it has gone.

My next competitions are going to be the Junior National Championships, and after those we will decide in which competitions I will skate during this season.

GIADA RUSSO

Skating at the European Championships has been an amazing experience for me. I am sorry I didn't skate the Short Program at my best as I did in other international competitions this season, for example Merano Cup and the National Championships. In any case, I would have been more disappointed if I skated a clean Short and I could not qualify for the Free; this is going to be anyway an experience that I will bring with me for the future competitions. Perhaps here in Stockholm the emotion for the very first important competition of my career payed its toll.

My next competitions are going to be Challenge Cup in The Hague and Val Gardena Spring Trophy in Selva di Val Gardena.

ROBERTA RODEGHIERO

I changed the Short Program before the European Championships and I came back to the one I had at the beginning of the season. For the National Championships we had decided to change music because I felt the need of relaxing during the program, and to skate to a slower music. In any case, I think it didn't bring out the energetic side of my skating, it didn't fully suit me, that's why I decided to go back to the first program of the season for this competition.

Becoming National Champion for me would have been very important, as I had and have never been first at Nationals before. Anyway, I have always “suffered” more at competing in national competitions, while in an international competition I like to have the chance to compete against many European skaters. It is strange but sometimes I feel less pressure in such competitions compared to national ones such as the Italian Championships in Turin.

After the National Championships I have worked a lot on repeating elements many times, and on the jump combinations, in order to have a more consistent technical side. This work has paid off as here in the Short Program I have achieved my personal best.

In Stockholm during the first competition segment I didn't feel I could do a second triple Toeloop after landing the first one, so to limit any damage I preferred sticking to a triple-double combination rather than risking a big mistake. The Long Program was very good and I am extremely happy about it. What a pity for the last jump, when the public had started clapping along I thought “Try to concentrate anyway, isolate yourself”. Obviously it's easier said than done, and that mistake was mainly caused by tiredness. I am so happy that apart from that everything was perfect in my competition. Even the Loop, the most difficult element for me, was good, and in fact after I landed it I told myself that I had to keep the focus because there were other jumps left and that the program wasn't over at all!

MEN

IVAN RIGHINI

I have to say that although these being my very first European Championships, and not having lots of experience concerning such big competitions, I was not nervous at all. It was my debut and I was really calm: I felt nervous throughout the season and here I felt no rush, I knew what to do and in what order do it to achieve it and I felt great both in the Short and in the Long Program.

I feel that Italy supports me more than Russia, as before I had no chance to skate in front of such a big crowd and thus I couldn't feel such a great cheering from the public when I was competing for Russia. The whole Italian team and the audience here encouraged me, I really felt their support, I feel like a new person now.

I did change both boots and blades right before Nationals, but everything is fine now and I really hope I won't need to change them until the end of the season! I feel comfortable now, it was a rush to change both before nationals but since then I have had plenty of time to get adjusted to them. The Axel now is much better and the quad is good too. Unfortunately coming into this competition I had a bit of pain in my heel so it was hard to jump the quad. Nevertheless, I attempted it here although it was not planned in my program content. I decided to do it because I had nothing to lose.

I want to stress again how the public here was great, towards the end of the Long Program I felt no more power in my legs but I heard people cheering for me, screaming “Come on, come on, go!”. that recharged me, and I could go from an element to the following one with new power. That was amazing, I didn't expect this competition to be so big.

Perhaps I will compete at Challenge Cup before heading to the World Championships, where my goal is to be in the top ten. I will go home now to Moscow in order to finish my university degree, as I have my final diploma exams. I am studying acting, theatre, ballet, it's a theatrical institute. It's pretty important to me and of course I also want to see my family after such a big competition.

 

ICE DANCE

MISATO KOMATSUBARA/ANDREA FABBRI

Misato: These have been our first European Championships for us, we have been skating together for about seven months and therefore it was a big accomplishment just being here in Stockholm, definitely. Everything was going fine until the fall: the mistake we did in the lift can happen, unfortunately it had never happened before to us in practice and these kind of things only happen when there's a lot of tension during the performance. It was the first time both of us had faced such a prestigious competition, as we had never competed at the World Junior Championships before. Such mistakes can happen. In any case, we were the third Italian pair in Stockholm and everything we had done before the fall was nice and clean: adding the points we missed in the final lift, we would have qualified for sure. It is clear that you don't make excuses for your shortcomings, but it is natural to rethink about what happened. After all we are quite happy.

Andrea: Our pair was born when I looked for a partner on the website Ice Partner Search: I watched Misato's videos and I wrote to her, very simply. At the beginning we considered representing Japan, but in that country there are already two pairs, and it wouldn't have made sense skating for that country for being the third ranked couple, nationally. Thus we decided to compete for Italy: from a logistical point of view it would have been easier as the Federation is in Milan, where we train, which makes our job easier.

About the National Championships, we skated clean in Turin, there was obviously less tension there. We earned this spot at the European Championships, we proved that we were able to compete here and that our qualification was not a gift. We are extremely satisfied of that. We are now going to compete in Oberstdorf, at Bavarian Open, in a couple of weeks. We will try to skate our best to end the season on a high note, although it would have been amazing to qualify for the Free Dance here. In retrospect I can say that even mistakes become experience for the future competitions.

 

CHARLENE GUIGNARD/MARCO FABBRI

Marco: We are satisfied with our performance: we skated two great programs, and the public was so involved in our Free Dance. This is definitely a positive note because when you are able to involve the spectators then you succeeded in communicating something to whom is watching you. We are very happy about that. Unfortunately our Technical Score in this competition remained below our expectations, especially in the Short Dance: the top pairs received high levels, while we have been the only skaters among these rankings to receive low levels.

Charlène: We were the only ones to receive level 2 for the Step Sequence among the first twelve couples, and therefore we were sorry to see such levels in our score sheets. Sometimes we are not able to understand these kind of scores, but it's ok, our performance has been extremely good and that's the most important thing in the end. We are not able to control the scores, but only what happens on the ice: the latter aspect has been really positive for us and thus we leave Stockholm happy about how we approached and lived the competition.

The only thing we are sorry about is that without the British pair that last year won the bronze medal, and as the Russian pairs are not very established yet as the ones of the past years, we had the chance to achieve a good result, placement-wise.

Marco: Unfortunately during the Free Dance morning practice Charlène collided with one of the skaters, suffering a muscle contracture on her thigh that prevented her to give 100% in the Free. Therefore today I had to skate with even more energy, for trying to help her as much as I could during the performance, but I have to say that despite her problem no one noticed the difference from an outside point of view. This is another positive aspect of the competition for us. Our next competition will be the University Games in Granada and then we will conclude the season at the World Championships in Shanghai.

 

LUCA LANOTTE

Our preparation towards these European Championships has been very intense, it was probably the toughest of our career: we had never trained so much for a competition, even last season, even at the Olympics. On the contrary, that competition has been very particular because we had to stay in Sochi for two weeks, and when you have forty minutes or one hour and a half of training everyday – while you usually spend four hours on the ice – with the judges looking at you, you cannot really train, you have to do a performance on the ice and not an actual training session.

That has been a different competition approach for us. Nevertheless I can say that Sochi has been the less stressful competition of my career. This one, on the contrary, has been one of the most stressful ones, because to us it was like testing out nines, it was our comeback. Failing here would have meant to put ourselves into a difficult situation, even more difficult that the one we faced at Cup Of China, while succeeding would have meant turning a page compared to that competition, in the eyes of the judges as well.

Our preparation for the European Championships has been unbelievable, we had never trained like that before. We discovered new training methods, new ways of practicing on the ice even more harshly than before – especially for the Free Dance.

For the Short Dance we have focused more on every detail of the technical side, because in our opinion this year if you make any small mistake in the technical content in the Short Dance, you are cut off from the podium. It is an extremely selective dance. A missing Key Point can make you lose enough points to prevent you fighting with the top pairs.

The competition has been tough for Anna and I, because the come back was a weight upon our shoulders, although during these difficult months we had such a wonderful support from the whole Italian Team. Having the Team standing by us was an great feeling.

We had a precise tactic on how to approach this competition, because we knew we had to be perfect in Stockholm. We are proud of how we faced the competition here and we are extremely happy of the final result. We respect both the final result and the pairs that were on the podium with us. We tried to continue our work with pride and honour, and that's the thing that matters the most to us. Some people after the Short Dance asked us whether we felt sad for the standings: there was nothing to be sad about! The way we entered the ice, – and there's no one that is not scared: even if you are a great champion, everyone is scared before a competition, we are all human beings – that's what made us successful. The way we reacted in the Short Dance and reaffirmed our approach in the Free Dance, that's where we felt alive, authentic, we did it! We followed the script we had chosen to play regarding the approach to these Championships: we had to do a precise and technically impeccable performance. We know that performance-wise we can give much more compared to what we showed here in Stockholm: everyday in training we give much more under an athletic point of view, compared to what we did here. Today it was important to face the competition in this way, because we couldn't afford to run any risk.

That's what it means being mature, having enough experience for being able to handle such a particular situation, and that is a characteristic that the other pairs don't have. We have tried to use our expertise, our adulthood - compared to the other couples – and to show it on the ice with interpretation. We tried to show a man and a woman on the ice, two people that have a strong connection between them. The most striking difference between us and the other athletes is the age: this can be a double-edged sword. While the other athletes are fresh, athletic, we are mature on the ice, the others do not have our experience and that's what we rely on. Our maturity and interpretation is not better than the others', but just different, it is something the other competitors here do not have.

We have changed the interpretation of the Free Dance compared to the one we showed at the China Grand Prix. We think that this one suits more the turning page we wanted to have this season. We wanted our program to have a wider impact, that it would suit more our personalities. We tried to start from the macabre dance concept, a topic expressed not only by Sant Saens but also by paintings and other work of arts. In our program we put in contrast two key concepts: death and love. I am the death and I fall in love with Anna, a mortal girl. During the program we try to show the different shades that a general feeling such as love can have: seduction, fight, passion, sweetness, pureness – the latter is showed in the slow part of the Dance. We try to show how I, the death, try to seduce Anna, to attract her inside my world, as I desire her. And at the end I am able to catch her. It is nice to see how this program is growing with us throughout the season. These shades that we have tried to add in our interpretation grow alongside the experience that we gain as long as we continue to train our program, it almost seems like a living creature. Even our coaches sometimes tell us “We hadn't noticed this detail yesterday, but today you were able to interpret it perfectly!”. This program is never the same, it is constantly evolving. It is a wonderful thing and it is completely different from what we did last year. The ability to evolve alongside your program everyday, to show all of its nuances, that's what makes us different from the other dancers.

Our next competition is probably going to be the World Championships, we are going to do a nice and long preparation towards Shanghai. We prepared and changed from Cup Of China to Nationals and from there to the European Championships, and we want to do the same at the World Championships. We want to fight to stay on the podium, to defend our title. We will go there in the same way we approached this competition: with a detailed plan of how to handle the situation, to show that we are the best, to fight against extremely good pairs that will skate programs packed with difficulties. We must be at their same level, if not better. There's a lot of work to do, and in Shanghai we will use a different plan from the one we had here. We want to attack, to risk and to give it all.

 

PAIRS

ALESSANDRA CERNUSCHI/FILIPPO AMBROSINI

Filippo: This competition has been a bit difficult for us: we are not used to skate in front of such a big public, with cameras pointed on us. At the beginning we were definitely nervous, but I think that now we have understood how to deal with that and that we need to let ourselves go. We were more nervous in the Short, while we tried our best in the Free Program. After the Short we did our best to skate the Long as good as we could, and I think we did it, except for the two throw jumps where we were too much enthusiast. In any case it was great to skate in front of such a huge public.

Alessandra: Regarding the two falls on the throw jumps, we kind of rushed into them. In practice we usually wait a bit more in order to let me reach the correct axis with my body. Perhaps our enthusiasm, energy and adrenaline made us rush too much the throws settings.

Compared to last year, this year we felt more ready to face this kind of competition, under a psychological side as well. Although we didn't qualify for the Long Program last year, it's not like we died right after! We survived and even if we make mistakes, nothing bad happens. It's all about visualising things from a different perspective: a competition can seem a huge obstacle, a great stress, but actually we only have to do what we do in training everyday.

Filippo: At the National Championships we did a good performance in the Short Program, we were quite at ease, while in the Free we were more nervous, we were not able to handle the situation well even if we had nothing to lose. Since the beginning of the season we have been working on improving under every aspect: we are improving our levels and we are satisfied of the technical progresses we have achieved so far. The nice thing is that we are still young and therefore we can improve under so many aspects, we can work on several different things in training in order to give 100% during competitions.

 

NICOLE DELLA MONICA/MATTEO GUARISE

Matteo: I am so happy: today we showed that we are able to skate. We can do everything, every element, always. During training we do very few mistakes, but we fall apart at competitions. An example is the Short Program we did here in Stockholm. When we do a lot of mistakes in training, we do a maximum of one small mistake in the Short Program.

Today we showed who we really are: if we are able to follow this route, we will be able to grow Components-wise, confidence-wise and standings-wise. Today I am very happy for us, for Vale and Ondrej, for Filippo and Ale: three Italian pairs in the top ten at the European Championships, this is a historical result for us!

Our problem is not about recovering after a mistake: when we start a program we are already holding us back. We have to find the right mindset that would allow us to be calm, relaxed and at the same time to maintain a good feeling in our body. Today we were more precise, maybe because we were angry, because we wanted to show what we are made of but at the same time we didn't have the expectations we bore in the Short. What kills us is expectations, we are not able yet to control this aspect of a competition. We were perfect even at practices here, it is just a matter of almost switching your brain off and tell yourself: “Ok, I am here but my body goes automatically”. Anyone who saw us at the Long Program practice this morning praised us, because we had done everything cleanly. In competition after three minutes we made three mistakes, in four hours of training in Milan we make three mistakes! In order to improve we definitely have to improve our technique, to perfection our elements for reducing as much as we can any chance of mistakes. Moreover we need to work on the mental aspect of the competition, on breathing and concentration. Without obviously taking away anything from choreography, because if you think of the story you have to interpret on the ice you automatically empty your mind from the stress of executing the technical elements.

We have already done many competitions in the first part of the season and thus we will not compete in other events before the World Championships. We are now going to take a break and then we will start to get ready for this last competition. Our goal in Shanghai will be to skate two programs at our best, we don't chase any goal because we do not even know all the participants yet. We can and we are able to do that, that's our goal.