Two very different competitions!

I know this was Graz's first attempt of hosting an international event and i know they will learn from their mistakes, but most of the competition was hard to swallow. For a start spectators were expected to pay 20 euros a day per ticket so only competitors managed to actually watch the skating. We arrived to find out the hotel we were staying at was a Marriott hotel, for skaters who can hardly afford to fly here let alone stay for the week in a very expensive hotel.



20euro each way for the bus to the hotel from the airport so with 5 of us travelling to the event it was cheaper to hire a car for the 5 days, good job because they decided to charge for the bus to the main rink and a separate charge for the bus to the practice rink. On top of that we had to pay 40 euros for the entry to the competition and 30euros a day for meal tickets…. For those of you that are good at math, that’s a lot of cash, especially with the euro so strong. Britain had a huge team there too, for a lot of our younger British skaters this was their first international and may now believe this is how all competitions are run.



Practice was at some different rink each time never on the main competition rink (I know its only ice but it does make a difference!) and one of the practice rinks was outdoor with a roof but no walls. Then on the day of the long our practice was cancelled due to a hockey practice taking place at the same time… We got a free meal ticket though. 2 clean programmes and we finished 5th... so we took it on the chin as ever, and it was a learning curve!



Time to get back to work, building on improvements already made so the next competitions can be positive experiences. The Skate America Grand Prix was here faster than we knew it! We had 6 working days to maintain our fitness and touch up our programmes. No time for new elements, we know you want us doing harder stuff but we are working on them out the programme, they are coming and we will show them when they are ready. Skate America Grand Prix was all about showing our new form and proving we British do have class.



It took us 31 hours of travelling to get to the Infamous Lake Placid home of the 1930+81 Winter Olympics. On arrival after our bus driver got lost and needed directions to our accommodation via a US team member phoning a friend, we checked in around midnight. But its not that easy is it, you all must know better by now. 3 times every hour from this moment until 3am the man on the front desk moved us from our rooms. Trust me my smile for just a little moment started to fade, only very slightly and the brighter side was setting very fast! But next morning we had a great practice and all was forgotten. Ice was great, the only problem was that huge Cancer.net signs were plastered everywhere because they sponsored the event and as you may know Stacey's Father Dave Kemp died just over 6 years ago of Bowl Cancer and this kind of threw our cool slightly. Hopefully the crowds watching didn't notice but we were always skating with a slight lump in our throats.


We stayed at the USA Olympic Centre halls of residence for athletes and it was just how an event should be run. The food was great and being in such an inspiring place brought the best from all the athletes. Competition time was tense as usual and we were skating 4th in the short which is now worked out by World Ranking points instead of the traditional draw. We skated a great short with a good twist fantastic throw triple loop and nice spins with a fast impressive press to star combination in the lift, then going in to the death spiral with the whole programme done clean and well, disaster!


Not to sure what happened all i know for sure is it didn't happen, so we lost 3.5 marks plus the deductions from the judges for an ugly end to the programme, Ooops! In the free programme we had no pressure, we weren't going to catch any of the US teams 6points down on home soil, so we skated for us and the hard work we've put into training this season. We did our best to a massive North American crowd, with only slight mistakes on the throws and last lift but an admiral performance overall. We left feeling a little more upbeat and know with nationals just next week we can show a home crowd just how far we've come.


Catch you next time

Sorry we haven't blogged for a while but due to unforeseen circumstances (our camera broke!) we couldn't finish this post until pictures were obtained (most people probably don’t read the input just look at the gloss). Anyway if you've been paying attention to the website you'll already know we've competed at two international competitions. We won at Warsaw Open and finished 8th at an interesting Oberstdorf Olympic Qualifying competition in Germany. Next week we compete in Graz Austria with a huge British squad filling most discipline's in the Novice, Junior and Seniors events.

Oberstdorf didn't fail to provide all the excitement we've come to expect from the event and a lot of great new programmes were put on show. We achieved a personal best score in Oberstdorf, with only 1 mistake in the short programme on the side by side double axel and a strong clean performance in the long. It was a tough competition because for most the teams there it was the most important of the year as it was their Olympic Qualifying event and they aimed to peak here. The teams that had already qualified were using the event to show new programmes and warm up before the Grand Prix's where they would wish to skate their clinical best. We were really pleased with our performance's though and enjoyed the whole event as last season we couldn't attend due to Stacey's illness.

This years programmes have really fell into place, and still lots of room for improvements before the Olympics in February. No real big changes in general training, more ice time and a growing skating school is helping our improvements and building on the work we put in last season. August saw the start of our competitive season in Warsaw our first event, it feels like it was last year now but we had great fun and Mariusz Siudek our coach had 3 senior teams in the event all of which made it on the podium. Training has been going great and are just looking forward to a busy month of competing this November. Next week were in Graz, then a week back in Torun, then we have Skate America in Lake Placid, then a week back home, then we have British Nationals in Sheffield and then November is over!

So i hope you keep a close eye on us and if you can make the trip to see us compete it would be great if you could come down and support us in our Olympic Season. All our very best wishes,
Stacey and David

Summer

Welcome back folks! Hope you've all been well and enjoying your summer. I thought it would make sense to post our first blog of the Olympic season before it all starts to kick off. Junior Grand Prixs are already under way and we've competed in our first competition of the season at the Warsaw open which we won. In a few weeks we will compete at Oberstdorf Olympic Qualifier and watch first hand the teams still fighting for Olympic spaces. Exciting times in the World of figure skating, an Olympic season is as good as it gets! Next week is the junior grand prix in Torun so we wish our British skaters all the very best there and will be along to support them.


Guess your wondering what we've been up to since Worlds? No, ok well i'll tell you anyway. A few new changes, the second ice pad in Torun, new long programme and of coarse a new arrival of Mariusz and Dorotas little Richard. Stacey had her 21st Birthday which we celebrated in style. We have new training partners the Estonian team Masha and Ilja with our junior Polish champions team coming on leaps and bounds over the summer. Also we have a new ice dance coach Sylvie who is fantastic with great presence on the ice and really compliments Mariusz and Dorota's school.


Thats the recent stuff but after LA we managed to fit in a holiday in Spain, 3 summer camps and a trip home to see family. We flew back from LA landing around 8pm then stopped the night at Stacey's mum's and 6:30am the next day we were on a plane to Barcelona with a load of our friends! We had a week at a friends Villa just outside of Tarragona (near Barcelona) and just relaxed, spending some quality time with the people closest to us. We were 5 minutes from the beach and the weather was great until the last day when the heavens opened and flooded the whole area! So i burst the hire car tire and was stuck changing it in this monsoon. Funny now but i wasn't laughing at the time.




After leaving Amber (our kitten) for so long we decided we had to get back to Poland and visit some of the sites around by us that we haven't had time to see when we were in season. A bit of us time! Coincidently when we got back to Torun it was the World Ice Hockey Championships and the Great Britain Supporters Club gave us celebrity status amongst them and treated us to tickets to all the British games (and yes GB beat Poland in the last game to gain a Bronze medal). It was very exciting stuff and we were very proud of them!




A few weeks back we had a winter Olympic conference in Glasgow, we met up with Jenna, our team leader Sue and team Dr Elanor for the weekend. I think we all had a great time and heard from some incredibly intelligent individuals who gave up their time to talk to us about their experiences and thoughts on how to progress in winter sports. The British Olympic Association are really trying to push the efforts of the British team to its limits. Along with some fantastic team bonding (and sublime cheating!) events and motivational speakers it was a very successful and productive 2 days.




We were in lite training until early may then we travelled home for my birthday... For 2 days! While i was back i was invited to my old high school Nelson Thom in Wigton to present their first ever awards for sporting achievement, i felt very proud and they made me feel very special. My birthday we went to my home town Carlisle with friends, and the next day we flew back to Poland. From there the next weekend we went to Dorota's home town Krakow and spent a few days with Mariusz and Dorota seeing the sites in a very beautiful town. From there we got our season rolling by travelling to Milan, choreographing our new long programme.




Now was time to start work again and our athletics coach came to town, his name Pan Jacek (Mr Yatsek). We went to the Polish Olympic centre on the coast called Cietniewo which was all off ice work then we went tto the opposite end of the country to the mountains to train both on and off ice. Unfortunately Stacey had to go England at the end of the Olympic off ice camp to sort out a knee problem she picked up. The weather though has been great, adding to the pleasure of the start to our season.




Its has been great reminiscing on our holidays and the start of our season in which seems to of been the fastest year on record. Its just flown by!

Well i think now your up to date, and i will talk to you again soon! Take care now

Review of Worlds

So, I had a few emails saying we didn't describe very well what went on while we were at Worlds. Well, everything kind of fell into place so there wasn't too much to report on (for a change!). On the first practice, which was on the practice rink we walked into the LA convention centre and there was a small temporary ice rink slap in the corner of this truly enormous building. Simple as we are everyone found it comical and strange at the same, an idea for Tate Modern maybe? It was in fact a nice rink, and when we were drawn to skate with Mariusz's old coaches' two Canadian teams it had a good atmosphere.


We skated quite late on for us, first out to perform Short in our group and skated clean with the only mistake being Stacey getting a little excited over landing a sweet throw triple loop. I wasn't so pleased with our component marks because for us it was loads better than we skated at NHK in Tokyo yet our components were almost 4 points lower, that's a whole element! It cost us a group for the long the next day and probably a whole place overall! So not concentrating on whether the cameras were still filming I got up to leave kiss and cry but was very promptly told to stay, Ooops big fine if you leave early, but it wasn't to make a point it was just me not thinking. We didn't wait around for the draw tha evening as it was going to be gone midnight with an early start. Anne our team leader drew for us… yet another first to skate for the long.
Sometimes when you step on to the ice, you just have a good feeling about things and this was one of those moments. Just in a world of our own, and for that programme in that moment of time we skated it the best we could. When a years hard work is judged in 4 minutes and 50 seconds and you achieve to do your absolute best, it has a feeling of complete joy. In just under 5 minutes we completed six level four elements (with 2 other elements classed as level 2 and 3) and 2 clean throw triples, with intricate choreography throughout linking the programme together the whole time thinking you must go faster. With hard work this all fell in to place and we reaped the rewards a place at the Winter Olympics.


Our only goal for the entire season was reached only by performing 2 clean programmes on 2 wonderful evenings at the Staples centre in LA. As the week progressed we managed to start seeing some of the Town, unfortunately not so many of the stars. Mariusz spotted Bruce Willis on the first night, and we saw Jordan with Peter Andre were having a Californian Pizza but unfortunately that was our lot. I would like to think that some stars would have watched us in the arena? I know Haig took his cousin Eric Idle to see the mens free and i saw Stephane Lambiel and Johnny Weir too. On the Saturday we hired a ford Mustang to drive around in for the day, and it was great! I like my cars and have always wanted to drive one of the new Mustangs, so we spent the day beach hopping. Starting at Huntington beach where a surf competition was on and going up to Long beach, Venice beach and finally Santa Monica before heading back for Jenna's free skate. It was a great day and we finished it off by driving up to Rodeo drive and Stacey bought me a cool juicy couture jacket saying 'Great Freakin' Britain'. I imagine David Beckham has the same one!



We spent our final 2 days at Universal studios even the day we flew we spent the morning there. There was a lot more we wanted to see and do but i think we'd done as much as we could in the few days we had, LA is so spread out. Now its back to the drawing board and plan out what to do in our 2009-10 Olympic season. Speak soon!

We Qualified for the Olympic Games...

... And that's all that matters! Ha ha, after Stacey's illness this was the only goal left on our once long list and we achieved it. We just had to skate 2 clean programmes at the final competition of the year, no pressure then. Winning Golden Spin and getting 4th at the NHK trophy this year were both just icing on the cake for this season, i would of traded both of those results to be going to the pinnacle competition of sporting excellence. First of all I'd like to thank all the British fans who made the long trip to come support us and the British team, and also to all our fans who watched on the TV or Internet. We have heard so many wide tales about how followers got to watch us in the end, we just feel honoured by the support! Thank you all.

It isn't just David and Stacey who has got us here, we have such a strong team working in the background to help us achieve what we can and this success is felt by each individual member of Kemp and King. First most the NISA World Class Performance Team who have supported us admirally from the start of our careers, our financial support from parents, Jewellery by Michael King, skate force trust, NLTG, R N Electronics, and Sue Naylor. But our most great full thanks go to the tireless workers of the British Olympic Association for the Olympic Solidarity Trust, TASS (Talented Athlete Support Scheme 2012) and Sports AID without who we could never of had the financial support to achieve the commitments that we have made! We are so very thank full you put your faith in us, thank you.

I never thought back in Dumfries that this moment would come true, tottering around the ice never being the best skater at the club and not a huge amount of talent. This just made me more determined, I'd always make achievable goals every year, and slowly making small steps to our eventual goal. Stacey actually started her skating because of Oksana Baiul back in the 1994 Olympics and this was the last time a British pair team competed at the games. It is very strange how things work out and nobody can predict what will happen, yet some things are just meant to be. After our final position in the long, i knew we'd done enough. I looked up to see the bright lights of the Staples Centre beam down and thought, David Kemp (1960-2004) and George King (1919-2008) were there smiling down as they'd know it too. There isn't much to success if it can't be celebrated with lots of supporters, friends, family even with all the commitments and sacrifices made our home still accepts us with open and praising arms along with our new overseas community.

So i hope i didn't ramble on too long, now were sitting back at home in Poland planning our next season and reflecting on the last. LA was amazing, how a World Championships should be held, and with the great weather it all just felt surreal for an ice skating event. This week the Great Britain ice hockey team are playing in Torun at the Division 2 World Champs, so we have tickets to go support them and we also start the process of booking up our season and finalising our plan.

Pre Worlds Camp, Chicago

In true Stacey and David style, we couldn't just leave for a big competition without any drama. Well, we had a car crash............ Anyway the morning before we set off to Warsaw we were stopped at a red light for the tram stop after getting supplies for our long journey. As we were talking about our upcoming travel plans 'SMASH'! All we hear is a screech a skid and felt a huge bang. With our handbrake on we were still rammed 5-7 meters. In front of us people were exiting the tram, and now feel lucky we didn't hit anyone. I looked back to see a ruined blue fiat Bravo with a bonnet missing, presuming he'd left it in our little old Clio.

Our very good friend and president of our skating club Axel (also the president of our car insurance company!) came down to help and sorted everything so we could just drive off. We were staying that night at his beautiful Warsaw penthouse apartment as we had an early flight the next day, so we must give a huge thank you to Marek for helping us so much. From then on things went very smooth, we weren't upgraded on the flight but we got good economy seats and when its a 12 hour flight it really helps. I just watched the film Australia, which was really good and slept a little.

So, we arrived in Chicago and the weather was fantastic. We shopped a little just so we could stretch our legs and left for Davenport. We stayed with one of the Polish Pair teams, Liz and Patrick who train in the Quad Cities rink which i thought was a great name for an icerink. They were Bronze medalists at Polish nationals and stayed in Torun the week before, training with us and said they would return the favour. We had such an easy week because they looked after so well, loads of great food and perfect ice time. Liz's parents Gus and Irene made their home ours and i can't say there are many times that has happened to me, just made us so welcome and comfortable. One day a travelling AHL team (the division down from NHL) watched our practice before they went on and said as we watched you, you can come watch us, so we got free tickets to their game!

The week just flew past, and now were in LA at the World Championships, competing for Great Britain. It makes you feel very proud, and look back at our career in almost disbelief, that were now on our fourth senior World Championship. Lets hope for many more...

Well i hope you all enjoy watching on Tuesday and Wednesday and I will try to keep you all posted, thanks for reading.

Torun life!

With only 2 weeks until our short programme in Los Angeles training just boils down to fine tuning and perfecting our routines. This point in the season feels great, you've done all the hard work through the year, its just like your really getting the best out of your programmes and then in 2 weeks its time to start a new season. This year has been such a roller coaster ride, not only with the ups and downs but also with the speed its passed, with its excitement until the end and how its coming to a very abrupt halt. With losing a family member in December then gaining a family member in January, in this last year we've really found strengths from all different places but we always had a surprisingly great deal of support from Torun. This town is a very fantastic place with a wealth of activities, we really feel like we landed on our feet here.





Life in Torun is almost all skating (that's why were here!) but you need balance in your lifestyle, skating is what i do it doesn't define who i am. So we've found out that Torun isn't just where we train, its also where we live. We now have some great friends out here lots of which are from Britain which we never would of imagined when we first came out, these pictures are all from our friend Glens birthday party held at the new Indian restaurant in town. Torun is quite a unique town, a wide range of activities and places to explore, with quirky traditions that keep us amused and frequently bemused. We don't drink alcohol when were in season so have yet to taste the night life but hear that it is very lively as it has a high student population. This also means now that i've started teaching English here there is a lot of people needing to speak with native speakers to improve their English skills.


Anyway, must go training now but i will keep you updated with how things are going! All our very best

Back off holiday

Well were home in Poland now, we skated in Britain last week to keep on top of things but today is the first day of training if you get what i mean. Europeans felt a long one this year and the first one with no official closing banquet, which is like there was no end to the competition, a little strange. Helsinki was pretty, not a lot to do though, and food is just a luxury for the rich! I'm sure Worlds in L.A will be a little change from the minus degree's and feet of snow. Britain seemed to have got its own fair share though, in between our busy schedule of seeing my new week old nephew and sorting out our mounds of paper work and visits to Manchester to see one of our choreographers we did actually find time to go sledging! It seems impossible what you can fit into a week, but its also amazing what you can achieve.

We have a few programme changes to make but nothing spectacular, we'll save that for Olympics! Ha ha, the programmes mainly need to be faster, tighter, and clean. Our qualification criteria for the British Olympic Association is very demanding so we must demand a lot from our selves and we truly believe we can do it. The Olympic qualification for ISU just seems confusing more than anything, but everything aside we just need two more good skates this season! I find you just need a little luck on your side and a lot of hard work to benefit from most things in life.

Anyway its good to be back in full training, and will hope to speak to you soon. All our best wishes,

Helsinki!

So, we made our flight from Warsaw! Better start than our last international already. It was an easy 3hr drive down with a short 1hr 30min flight, and quickly escorted to our pleasant Scandic hotel. Everything went very smooth and practice this morning was no different, with a nice clean short. The practice rink was a bit of a shock to most the pairs, I can only describe it as an ice rink in a cave, which incidentally doesn’t really have the head room for pairs. The first lift I only took to my shoulder as I feared for Stacey’s safety. But once we adjusted slightly we got on fine and are really looking forward to tonight’s 22:50 practice. A little late but its not for us to choose.

I love the big events where you can chat to skaters from all over the world mostly in similar situations to you, and watching the big names in skating live. It’s a great learning experience every time and you can’t learn it at your home rink no matter where you might be, you have to actually taste it. I’m sure if you can ask spectators at the rink if they can feel an energy they would agree there is something special at the big events. For now you’ll have to take my word for it but in the future you should try and make the journey.

The last two days we spent in Poland, training on our home ice and taking care of our kitty that we now won’t see for 9 days. While we were there the Guardian gave me a phone to do an article called ‘Whats Rocking Sport’ and its an insight in to athletes musical tastes, so that will be in on Monday if anyone is interested. Finland is similar weather to Poland too so we feel very well adjusted, which is great because there’s nothing worse than arriving to an event and not being comfortable. These small things can affect you but the main thing is to stay focused and just get two good skates out for all your years hard work to pay off. You can blame many things and make excuses but in the end its down to you and if you’ve trained properly you should have no worries.

Anyway, that is all for now. Were going for our dinner to keep up our strength. All our best

British National Championships

Sorry i couldn't update sooner! I wasn't paying £20 for the two day wi-fi cost when I'd only be on for 20mins in that whole time. Anyway, if you didn't know already we retained our fourth senior title in Nottingham this week. We skated a pretty clean short, a few of our levels were 3 instead of 4 but corrected them for the free. It wasn't a personal best for this season but a pretty good attempt, just 2 points off and in general it was stronger than all of our other competitions this season.

Well, another national championships over with and another desired result. It was a well run event, apart from being so close to the European Championships and skating at the start of the week instead of the end everything was fine. Not a huge crowd for the short as it was a Monday but surprisingly not too bad for the long. Lots of controversy as ever at the British mainly with the ice dance, excitement you can't get from any other sport in the world it really does surprise me that skating doesn't bring in the crowds it should.

Stacey had her dress changed slightly in the free and made a big difference aesthetically, its the little things that take all season to finely tune and yet at the final competition where your just getting the hang of things its a totally clean slate and you have to start again. But like we have time to worry about things like that next week its Helsinki for the European Championships and as its our Olympic Qualifying season a personal best is pretty essential. We feel that everything is in place for us now though, we just have to enjoy ourselves. I hate getting too serious for these events as it can stop a true performance, but as long as i can say i tried my best i will be very happy!

With our flight to Helsinki for the European Championships tomorrow we will say a huge thank you to everyone who came to support us at the British Championships and hope you can watch us next week at the European Championships. We'll be in touch,

Stacey and David

Festive Period

So our next set of competitions have jumped up on us faster than Christmas did. It seemed like we just arrived home from Polish Nationals and then I was there sitting in Bydgoszcz airport catching our flight to Liverpool for the holiday period. We had a short time at home, unfortunately a very sad time this Christmas but life throws us these times to help us reflect. We managed to dodge most the flu’s and chest infections that were going round, to be quite honest I think the Polish winter kills all the nasty bugs but your always left with a lingering cold. In Torun the temperature dropped to -22 which was quite a shock to us and meant most of our Christmas money was invested in warmer clothes. Training also got pretty chilly, most our sessions ended with numb hands and feet.

Skating as ever this year went well over the holiday period, playing around with new elements and skating good programmes preparing for Europeans. After last year at European Championships we have a big challenge to improve our placement but we’ve tried our very best to be in a position to try. In the rink where Mariusz and Dorota got their Bronze medal at worlds we will be fighting for top 5. Before Europeans we have the British Championships in Nottingham as a warm up. Any one whose going down on Monday or Tuesday I hope you have a great day and manage to see us skate. Its always a pleasure skating at home in Britain and it seems these days that its such a rare occasion that we can. If you can’t make it down you’ll be able to see our progress on the blog!

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone and hope to see you over the next week! All our very best,

Stacey and David