Chow's Skate Page

The Vana Tallinn Trophy was held in Tallinn, Estonia, on 27-28 May 2006. This was the most fun competition this year. Being smaller than Mountain Cup, it had the warm, homely friendship between skaters. Not that Mountain Cup lacked friendship, but I can imagine a new-comer being lost in the masses!

It was good to see that more Estonians were taking part (compared to the previous years). I would have loved to have interacted with more of them, but language certainly was a barrier, and we all sunk into our comfort zone with our group of friends that spoke a similar language. There were, however, a few who made the effort to chat with us, shared our locker room, and shared chocolates with us. It was lovely!

The 6.0 judging system was still in use, and it was sort of comforting to be using a system I had understood. I attempted the double loop, which was as usual not landed. I must have under-rotated my double toe too, and then messed up my double Sal.

I got through the program all the same, and when I got off, somebody congratulated me on a good program. I was feeling, at that time, that I had just skated a crappy program - I didn't feel it was good, but I suppose from a spectator point of view, it all flowed well, albeit the lost doubles. I'd really like to get my hands on a video of that program at Tallinn... wonder if anyone took it.

Dance was later in the day.
  - Dance? Solo?
  - Yes dance, no, not solo!
  - How...?

During Mountain Cup, I heard that Peeter, the Estonian gentleman I had skated against in solo dance at VTT last year, was the only entrant in Silver solo dance, and had asked what happened to me. I jumped to the opportunity to present my argument that there's no point for me to skate solo dance - especially not against a gentleman, when we should be partnering instead!

So, it didn't take long for Piret to arrange for us to partner for Silver dance - just the two compulsory dances required for solo dance. Now, we are talking the Tango and Blues here... which I found are not exactly a breeze to partner!

The first practise was... uh... almost a fiasco. I would cut into his path, we would be discussing how to start (and end) the dance, *and* we ended up having a dispute over whether the 4-count edge on the end-pattern of the Tango required a swing or not! I had learned it with a swing and apparently he had never done a swing there. Of course it didn't help that he spoke little English and I spoke no Estonian. We eventually consulted the book, which said nothing as to whether a swing was required or prohibited. I agreed to do "no swing" because it simply wasn't stated in the book, and it felt much easier for me anyways.

Our second practise was much better, though I still had that problem of forgetting to push on the man's shoulder when in Waltz/Tango position. However, that got better, and by the day of competition, it actually felt good doing the dances! The Tango was better, getting us scores of 4.0 for technical and 4.2 for presentation across the board. (This was scored on the 6.0 system) Later, other skaters asked us how we managed to do it at such short notice... well, knowing the dances certainly does help!

That was quite an experience, and I enjoyed the dances very much. It has renewed the inspiration to dance, and I think I will have to find a way...