2015 JGP Austria Blog: Guten Tag from Linz!

Guten Tag from Linz, Austria. I’m Damian Dodge, an American ice dancer with partner Julia Biechler, and I’ll be blogging for Ice-dance.com this week. This first entry is extremely late but I promise it’s for a good reason! Thank you, to everyone at Ice-dance.com for allowing me to blog this week, and for all of the hard work you do each season for the ice dancers.

Monday/Tuesday- Punch After Punch

Monday is usually travel day for Team USA going to Junior Grand Prix competitions. This week was no exception. Julia and I woke up to an email with a flight cancellation for our first flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt, Germany. We reached out to our team leader as well as the travel manager from USFSA. We did not hear back and were starting to get concerned. Many Lufthansa flights were cancelled due to a cockpit strike. Julia and I got on the ice, to train, hoping that at some point during our sessions we’d hear something about a new flight. Our day seemed to just go downhill from there. About 20 minutes into our session, we were told that the ice was going to be ending early due to a hockey tournament that was going on that day. They told us that one of the ice surfaces, in our 4 surface, rink had melted due to a compressor problem and that we had 20 minutes until we’d be kicked off of the ice.

After being told this news, and still hearing nothing about a flight, we quickly warmed up to do a run-through of our last program before the competition. The run-through was going well until Julia punched me in the eye going into one of our lifts It felt like a reoccurring theme, getting punched in the face, on Monday. Luckily, soon after skating, we were sent a confirmation for new flights. We had a late night flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt, 7-hour layover, flight from Frankfurt to Vienna, 3-hour layover, then flight from Vienna to Linz. After an extremely long 23 hours of traveling, we were in Linz!

When Julia and I finally arrived at the hotel, at around 12:30am, we were greeted by our lovely team leader Pilar Bosley. We couldn’t believe that she waited up for us, after everyone else on Team USA had already arrived. We quickly checked in and went to bed.

Wednesday- Practice Day

After a very short night, Julia and I were off to the rink. Wednesday was practice day for all disciplines, with two practices for each. Usually one of the first things to happen after arriving to a JGP is getting accredited and receiving a credential in order to get into the rink. Since we arrived so late, we had to do that in the morning on Wednesday. Julia and I were both so tired that we forgot to bring our passports to the rink to check in so we were not able to get accredited. Luckily, we were able to go to the draw for short dance and then had time to go back to the hotel and get our passports. We drew 18th and our teammates Elliana Pogrebinsky and Alex Benoit drew 12th.

Our first practice was in the practice rink, and the ice was extremely soft. After falling twice, in the same spot, we finished and were pretty happy with our first skate in Austria. The second practice was in the main rink and by the time we got on the ice, I was starting to feel tired from the day before. Needless to say, the practice went pretty well and we were happy to be done for the day. Julia and I quickly ate dinner, and were off to bed. I was hoping to write this that night but could not keep my eyes open, sorry Ice-dance.com 🙁

Thursday- Short Dance

Thursday, today, was finally the start of the competition for us, the dancers, and the ladies. Julia and I met for breakfast then were off to the rink. We felt strong in the practice and ready to go for later in the day. I was thrilled that we had about 4 hours in between the practice and our event, because that meant I had time to nap.

After my beauty-rest it was time to eat lunch and then go to the rink for the short dance. While warming-up, we were able to watch Elliana and Alex. They skated very strong and were well connected to each other. After, what felt like forever, it was finally time for us to skate our short. After our last competition, we were not happy with our technical score and have been working really hard to try to improve on our skating to boost the score. In our program we felt extremely relaxed and able to focus on our technical score more than usual, for a competition. It paid off and we got a personal best score for ourselves in short dance. After the event, we’re in second and Elliana and Alex are in fourth place. All of the scores are very close!

Immediately after the event, we went straight to the free dance draw. Julia and I were a little late so Elliana drew for us and we’re going to be skating 20th out of 21. They drew 17th.

A group of the U.S. skaters headed to dinner before going back to the rink to watch some of the ladies event. There are 35 ladies competing and we were only able to watch a few. I will update on the U.S. results in my next blog.

It’s time for me to go to bed, luckily the dancers have a “day off” tomorrow and only have one practice. Until then, I’m off to bed. 

~ Damian