2015 JGP Riga Cup Blog #3: Days 3 & 4

Hello!

As a brief resume of the past two days, let’s go back to Friday, short dance day.

We were in the second warm up with the two Russian couples and our training mate, French team. We are pretty happy with the way we skated earning a PB and standing in second place behind the Russians. We didn’t hit all of our key points, so we will go back home and work hard for our next event. We went for the free dance draw and funny enough, we drew the same skating order as in the short except for couples #5, Melinda and Andrew Meng.

This was a full day and we hung out with the Mengs, Louis and Angelique playing card to relax after our SD. I don’t like to complain but we can definitely say that this JGP was not that great in terms of food… I think we had, no I’m sure we had the same diner and lunch each and every day for five days…so at some points, we decided to order out.

In both of the JGPs we did last year, Tallinn and Ostrava, competition would resume on Friday, so we had time to go out walking around and cheering for other team USA members. This time our events were on Friday and Saturday, it seemed so long, like competition day would never come.

We were finally there, Sunday morning practice at 10am in the practice rink.  Still small, but I think I got used to the cold. It’s not that bad! Good practice for every team, so we’re ready for the free dance event. Our team mates, Emily and Kevin, had a very good skate.  I’m so happy for them. All teams skated well, we thought we did too, our coach too, but I guess the technical panel saw it different. So we ended up in 4th place. I wish we could have won our first JGP medal for Team USA.

Still a learning process. The important thing is we had fun skating this program and we need to move on, work hard and come back stronger!

To close the Riga Cup 2015 JGP, all team USA, coaches, parent and our team leader Ben  went to eat in the old town at Il Patio.  Food was great! Company was awesome! Thanks to Mr. Leahy for that great dinner and to Mrs. Weinstein for organizing it.

Early morning flight to reach our home.  Everyone was in the lobby at 4:30 am! 

It was great blogging for you Ice Dance.com!  Thanks for this opportunity.

Christina