Uphill

Getting back to full fitness after the holiday is a giant uphill struggle. Most people probably can't comprehend the kind of pain and exhaustion an athlete feels when they reach this point in the season. We are just starting to attempt full programme run throughs, which means 5 minutes at 100% full throttle, no holds barred. What’s amazing is that once a week seems tough but in just a couple of weeks we'll be up to five full programmes a week on top of our normal training schedule. However at this point in training mental strength is just as important as physical strength, the ability to set aside the distractions of pain, lack of energy and keep full commitment, not to let up, just keep on truckin'. Come that first competition, we'll be glad we did!

We've completed all our Choreography for both programmes now, working off ice with Artur a hip-hop instructor who won Poland's 'You Think You Can Dance' competition a few years back. It’s been a complete change from the classical and Latin American we did in the past and just refreshing to challenge a new aspect of dance. On ice the short and long programmes get smoother the more we do them. Some of the elements are a bit scrappy at the moment but that's normal, we can't be perfect all the time, as much as we try! That's the fun part anyway, taking someone else's choreography and turning it into your programme - complete with your tricks.

So it’s pretty repetitive stuff at the moment at home in Torun, Poland. It's the ‘practice makes perfect’ rule and we keep going over and over our programmes to gain almost an auto-pilot mode so we can get past the choreography and start pushing the speed. This week we are filming a review of our training to send to our federation. We used to come home for screenings but expense is a major problem for us this season and we have to cut down on all cost if were going to reach Sochi Olympics in 2014. Our money has dwindled since we moved out to train in the best Pairs School in Europe and British Olympic funds have sadly ended. But you can always replace money; what you can’t replace is your time and place in such a competitive sport.

Well sorry there isn’t anything more exciting to report this time but we have competitions coming up real soon and this is where the fun begins!

All the best people and work hard.

Life Skills

We had a great month in Krynica pinpointing our weaknesses from last season and really getting some great work done. It drew to a close as fast as it started and we ended our Polish squad camp in the mountains very pleased with ourselves. A busy schedule lay ahead, straight after a long days training we set off for home around 5pm only to arrive in Torun at 3am.

Needless to say I was very tired the next day, but it had to be done because our flight left Gdansk (which is another two hour drive) at 6am. All because our flight was cancelled a month before we flew, cheers!

We booked a hotel near the airport so we could get a few hours sleep. As we entered into Gdansk we were stopped in traffic, I put my hand break on, checked my mirror and oh no. I saw a white van speed round the corner and I could tell by his speed he was going to hit me. His brakes let out a loud screech, then tried to swerve but clipped my left side and just heard a mighty crash.

I pulled up to a lay-by and got out to check the damage. Not too bad. I had to pull the bumper out of my back left tyre and a few dents but overall it was ok. The other guy’s was mashed up a lot worse than mine but he cooperated fine. I thought ‘you idiot’ as he had his wife in the front and two children in the back in car-seats, you would think he would take it a little easier. Although annoying, luckily no one was hurt and my car at least was drivable, we exchanged our details and although a little dazed headed to our destination.

The hotel ended up being quite a trek away as we had to drive for about five minutes on a dirt track to find the place. It had a very lonely look to it and was quite under the weather with nobody around for miles. After seeing too many horror movies start this way we were a little on edge but made our way up to reception as we were both falling asleep already.

When we reached the front desk we were surprised to see smiling pleasant owners who upgraded our room for free and were very friendly. I felt very bad for expecting only bad things of their pride and joy but it just goes to show you can never judge a book by its cover.

A bit stressful and sleep deprived, but at least we returned safely just needing a bit more beauty sleep. Yet there was no time for catching up as I got back to Stacey’s just in time to be picked up by Shaun (Stacey’s brother) to go for my suit fitting. Before I knew it I was on a bus to Newcastle for Shaun’s stag do, but as juicy as it was you know I can’t say anything about the trip. The first law of the stag – sorry. What I can tell you is I had a great time and survived with only a few minor paintball bruises to the side, back, chest and legs.

On the Thursday of that week we managed to fit in a full days filming for a promotional advert at Ice Sheffield. A great day out and we really look forward to seeing the results from Rogue Frame Productions. Then to top it all off we had a fantastic weekend at Shaun’s wedding. Congratulations to them and I wish them many years of good fortune. It was a fantastic day and great to see all the families together. It pushed me and Stacey to get a few ideas together and think about the mammoth task of organising a wedding.

Anyway we are back in Poland now and had a week’s training back at base, just to see more great results. Let’s just hope the rest of our season can continue this way.

All the very best and speak soon.

Krynica Camp

Hello and welcome to the latest Kemp and King blog. Were happy to be writing to you from the very south of Poland in a mountain town called Krynica. It's a very picturesque place with it's own natural spring water, quite famous and sold throughout Poland. If you were wondering yes we did bring our little cat 'Amber', we had a few days to get here so drove from our home town Torùn, up to Prague then on to Vienna, and finished up in Zakopane. Amazing drive and stopped over in 3 beautiful cities, if anything i just wish we'd had a bit more time and money to see more of the places.

The weather has been stunning with it not dropping below 30degrees but maintaining a nice breeze, which is perfect when you are running for hours. We are here training under our Polish coaches and attending their annual Polish squad camp, which includes many various activities and is set out in a very organised manor so we can just get on and work! We've been running up mountains, plenty of core fitness sessions, gym workouts, aqua athletics, sports specific stuff and of course lots of ice time. It really is all the little things we appreciate though, just great to get back from training and food is prepared for you and the maids have tidied your room so you can just collapse in bed.

This is week 2 of the camp and the 3rd season we've started our on ice training in this way. We start very basic and easy, then by the end of the 4 week camp we build to our harder elements and full programmes. Always hard at the start of a season as just a few weeks out can really hit fitness and stamina hard. Our sport requires a lot of explosive power and this time of the year can put major strains on most your big muscle groups so you spend 10minutes getting down a flight of stairs for breakfast every morning. But all is well and we are very happy with our progress so far, we are very keen to achieve major leaps in our game and can only get through hard work.

Anyway, have to get warmed up for the ice but will speak to you all soon.
Best wishes,
Stacey and David

Olympic Village

Well, after the jet lag and busy training schedule has calmed down i finally have a bit of time to talk to you guys! Also there are rules to follow on an Olympic blog which i had to brush up on before i published this. Well i suppose you want to know what it is like here in the Olympic Village? Well in a word; Amazing! If you want a sentence; it is just absolutely fantastic with a cherry on top! We have the best apartment in the village over looking the harbour of false creek and all of down town, seeing BC stadium and the science museum. It is just perfect, with the weather great so far too.

Training is good, first few days with jet lag were hard but its tarting to ease off now. We start our official practices today and have a tough group so today is going to be interesting. Also a big problem is the food hall, with a massive selection of great food all prepared and ready for you 24 hours a day it will be very easy to spend most my days just eating. I will try my best not to let this happen. On that note, were off too breakfast, speak soon

Last minute checks!

Olympics, that’s what we work for and every 4 years it splendours our lives for a short while. We have prepared the best we can and now is our time to enjoy the moment. We had quite a successful last few competitions, with clean skates a the British giving us a 5th senior title and winning the joint Polish Nationals. Europeans was hard after missing the spin in the short but we put up a brave long and finished in 11th. Maybe if it had gone to plan we could of been 7th or 8th but that’s sport and nobody remembers the if, buts and maybes, were all just on a knife edge with competition extremely tight. This season has also shown great excitement in the old masters coming back to the sport just for Olympic glory and showing great form. One thing is for certain, we are all in for a really good show!

Tomorrow we fly and so we check and double check the packing, look at the travel plans again and make sure everything is organized. There has been so much snow here in Poland that we need to get the train to catch our flight as the road to Warsaw is dangerous at the best of times. When we arrive I will try my best to keep up to date most days with the blog, if i get in to a routine it shouldn't be so hard now should it.

Until tomorrow people!

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