Salt Lake City Blog #2: Day 1!

One could not ask for a more beautiful portrait and landscape. This being my first time here in Salt Lake City, I must say the mountains and the beautiful blue sky are truly one of a kind. 

Landing late last night, I enjoyed the wonderful surprise of walking into my hotel room and discovering my roommate, Max Aaron. Fortunately, he wasn’t already asleep, so we did have the chance to catch up, which was nice. Max and I have roomed together before—he was my first roommate on my first international in Courchevel, France. It always seems we have issues with our bathrooms, though. In France, we had no shower curtain for the week, so after showers we had a kiddy pool on the floor. Here in Salt Lake City, the back of our toilet fell off and shattered all over the floor. We just enjoy the excitement of bathroom mishaps.  

So today was the first day of practice for ice dance. Alex and I got a nice, relaxing morning, having the chance to sleep in and relax a little bit. It’s always nice going to competition and getting a break from the daily routine of training. Our practice went really well. We were able to go early and warm up while watching the first group of ice dance. Today for our practice, it was nice because we had fellow Team USA athletes with us, Anastasia and Colin. After the practice, we got to enjoy some sun and realized we were all wearing our Rayban sunglasses. Can somebody say Rayban sponsor?

After our day of practice, we were all able to come back and watch our Team USA pairs and men. All I have to say is WOW, our pair teams today were great! All the programs were really strong and really quite pleasant to watch. Alexa and Chris’ triple twist was huge, Maddy and Max’s program was so energetic and the music and choreography went perfectly together, and Jessica and Zack skated really strong with a huge twist and a beautiful throw triple. I couldn’t be more proud of all of our Team USA pair teams. After watching the pairs this evening, we all got to stick around and cheer on our men.

We had a great time cheering on our team and watching the men’s competition. Ross skated really well and he is always a pleasure to watch on the ice. His ability to move to the music is always a plus for his program component score. Douglas skated really strong and had a great program; his music selection was beautiful and his skating was also pleasurable to watch. Jordan skated well and had really soft movement across the ice, making his transitions smooth and flow really well from element to element. Lastly, my roommate Max skated to “Footloose,” which was quite cool. Seeing the use of words in freestyle is actually quite great. As dancers, we have always had the opportunity to have lyrics in our music, but this is new for the other disciplines, and it really brings a new vibe to the sport and creates a new style of entertainment for the fans to enjoy. Max’s quad was great and his footwork was awesome. Again, I’m so proud of our men here at the competition and I can’t wait to support them for their long programs tomorrow. 

I’m signing off for the night. I hope you enjoyed the blog and I’ll be updating you throughout the day tomorrow! Ice dance competition starts tomorrow, which will be so exciting to see how the new paso patterns are performed. I hope everyone enjoys the blog so far. 

One last thing—13 years ago today, America experienced such a tragedy. We lost so many citizens of this amazing country to an act of terrorism and although we all experienced sadness, our country stuck together. We joined arms to help one another and we stood together. We will never forget what happened this day, and I can’t be thankful enough to represent such an incredible country and be a part of the land of the free and home of the brave. United we stand.

Signing off,

 Daniel Eaton