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
