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After the first national ice dance competition at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago we interviewed the Senior ice dancers who competed there: Guignard / Fabbri, Alessandrini / Vaturi and Bernardi / Mior. The competition was a first major test in the path of the Olympic qualification, which will be determined by the technical scores obtained in different competitions of the first part of the season. Here are the statements of the skaters fighting for a spot in Sochi.
Wednesday 23 October 2013 12 minutes reading time
GUIGNARD / FABBRI, 1st place
Marco Fabbri: "We were nervous before this competition, as we were fighting for an Olympic spot. This pressure is obviously different from the one you have at Worls or Euros, but nonetheless it hasn't been easy to handle it. We had a quite good competition, there were some mistakes here and there, but overall we are happy with how we skated. Our biggest mistakes were a stumble in the Finnstep and flawed twizzles in the Free Dance, but considering the amount of pressure we felt and the result we obtained, we are overall happy.
The most difficult thing for us was to skate both programs in one day; the last time I did it was probably when I was a little kid. Moreover, I don't think it's fair to consider only the TES of the five competitions. In this way we are more concentrated on the technical execution of the elements and not on interpretation and overall performance execution. It would have been more fair, in my opinion, to consider the overall standings of each competition and not the points earned. Of course the six of us should have competed at the same national and international competitions, in order to not disadvantage any ice dancer in case of a particularly strict technical panel. With these qualificaton criterias, if an athlete makes a mistake it is unlikely he/she will be able to recover with the PCS. For example, when last year Luca (Lanotte) did a mistake in the twizzles at the Paris Grand Prix, their deservedly high PCS allowed Anna and Luca to place second overall. If during one of these qualifying competitions any of us made a mistake, that pair would not be able to get back into the fight for the Olympic spot. And this could obviously happen to anyone of us. That's why I am saying that it would have been way more fair to consider the overall competitions placements.
We are going to leave for Skate Canada on Tuesday, then our following competitions will be the NRW Trophy Dortmund, the second national competition in November and the Golden Spin in Zagreb before the National Championships."
ALESSANDRINI / Vaturi, 2nd place
Lorenza Alessandrini: "Simone and I are pretty happy with our performance, of course it's the first competition of the season and we can definitely improve on many aspects, but we feel that this has been a good start for us and a solid base where to keep on working.
We didn't set a specific goal, this competition was important to us because we wanted to understand whether we have been working towards the right direction, and the scores we received have been encouraging under this point of view. Simone and I are pretty happy with our performance, of course it's the first competition of the season and we can definitely improve under many points of view, but we feel that this has been a good staring point.
We have been flattered by the comments we received after the competition, especially because many people told us that we were able to deeply touch them. This is a very important thing to us, because we love our Free Dance and one of the goals we have when we perform is to convey emotions to the public. The story that inspired us is the murder of the Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. It is about young athletes as we are, and their coaches, that believed in sport and commitment as much as we do. That's why this theme had touched us so much and that's why it's so important to us to perform the program at its best.
We chose the music when we heard a Jewish song sang by Barbara Streisand during a theatre performance developed by Corrado Giordani, our choreographer. It moved us, and our coach Barbara Fusar-Poli helped us to look for other music which could be combined effectively together and would suit the theme we had chosen.
Next week we are going to compete at Coup De Nice, then we will surely skate at two more Senior B competitions and finally concentrate on the University Games and the National Championships"
BERNARDI / MIOR, 3rd place
"This competition definitely didn't go as planned. Besides our twizzle mistake - perhaps we didn't pay enough attention to them as we rarely make a mistake there - it wasn't the performance we worked for. We didn't skate as we usually do in training, and we did some small mistakes, that summed up together made the score lower. Righfully so, but we know we could have done much better. We are anyway happy that we changed our Short Dance music, because we feel this one to be closer to us. We hope we'll be able to add new details as the season goes on.
Regarding the Free Dance, we concluded the day in the same way we started it: with many small mistakes. But the positive aspect is that we got the proof that we performed a great program. The feeling we had was that the public - numerous, despite the few ice dance pairs competing - understood the story we were portraying on the ice.
The most flattering comment we received, and that gave us an immense satisfaction, was: "When I was young I have been told many fairytales, but no one has been able to portray it like you two did!". Fastastic, this is what we love about figure skating!
About the competitions that have been organized for the Olympic qualification, their number, schedule and locations didn't bother us. It was more a psychological problem, as after the Short Dance you relax a bit and think of the Free Dance only the following day. In this competition we had to be focused throughout the day. Physically it is not a problem as skating for four minutes after a few hours is definitely not tough, but as I said before, to handle psychologically this competition has not been easy.
Our upcoming competitions are going to be in Riga, Graz and then the University Games. We are definitely looking forward to compete at the latter competition as there are going to be ahtletes from all over the world! For the second part of the season, we are going to talk with Paola (Mezzadri) and with the federation and we will then decide what competitions we will attend."
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