Nice International

It’s the eve of our first 2010/11 season assignment and we’re feeling the buzz of competing once again. We have to hit the ground running as we’ve started late this season, well it was a busy year you know! We’re ready though as ever, all we ask from ourselves is what we do in training every day and a little luck wouldn’t go a miss.

With our coaches Mariusz and Dorota Siudek

Cost of us skating is a bigger problem at the moment though as this week (and the whole of the country is getting similar news) have been hit with big cuts. It’s £28k to be precise, which puts very big doubts over our future dreams for a Sochi 2014 Olympic Medal. It’s unfortunate and more annoyingly it’s distracting but we’re trying our best just to finish this season then make bigger decisions when we can look at the full picture.
Now writing this from the plane and wondering if the 5am start was just a dream or reality. We’ve ventured on all transport today bar a boat but with all the strikes in France who knows where our journey may go next?
2pm now with a 5am start and we’re not even in France yet, well you know what they say about Polish trains. I remember once going up to a Polish training camp in the mountains and the train was literally walking pace.
The flight luckily enough is direct to Nice and we’re flying over some beautiful mountain ranges that I guess are the Alps. I’ve never been to Nice before and have heard many good things about the place, mostly about the great weather, let’s hope that it lives up to the reports.
The competition itself is a prestigious event in the International Skating Union calendar as it’s one of very few events you can achieve world ranking points. For those who don’t know much about skating, when competing skaters have to skate two programs to music with the points from each skate adding up to a total amount of points.
First skate is called the short program which is 2min 50seconds long and is classed as a technical program because you have set elements to skate. Next is the free program that’s 4min 40seconds and is often called the long.
Every element is awarded points. The harder the element the more points you get, simple. Now you know the basics come competition time you’ll understand what I say when I talk about both the programs.
Right, I’ll leave it there but got some more Coupe de Nice content coming soon!
Best wishes