Salt Lake City Blog #3: The Short Dance
I’m here in the hotel lobby sitting with my coach Massimo Scalli and every morning we typically find one another at Starbucks sitting outside enjoying the beautiful weather. I don’t think they get bad weather here. Again, there is not a cloud in the sky and the incredible topography is truly one of a kind. Being born in Florida, the closet thing to a mountain we had there was a sand dune leading up to the sandy beaches of Cocoa Beach! I must say the mountains are truly incredible.
After enjoying my coffee, Massimo and I began to chat about the upcoming day. First off I’ll update the readers on yesterday’s events. Our (Team USA’s) pairs dominated the podium taking a gold silver and bronze! Congrats guys, you all looked amazing. Alexa and Chris your twist was through the roof, Maddy and Max your ability to move with the music is truly one of a kind and Jessica and Zach your throw flip is awesome. The amount of compression those knees take makes even a dancer envy your knee bend! Our Team USA men performed really well. Max Aaron took home his third gold medal from this event – he should be so proud. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay for the senior men free skate because I was so exhausted. Sorry guys, but after reading the reports and hearing the updates from Max everyone skated really well and I’m sure you all are so proud of yourselves!
Yesterday was also the senior short dance event. Alex and I performed really well. We went into this competition focusing on our character more than anything. Technically, we are great skaters and yes it’s very early in the season. Although the levels were lower than we wanted, we were more focusing on our program component score, which has improved since last season. Walking away from yesterday, we are looking forward to debuting our Gone With the Wind free dance and hopefully the fans and ice-dance.com followers will also enjoy the performance today. This free dance has given us the chance to show the new maturity Marina and Massimo are going for this year. We aren’t the babies anymore! We are looking forward to another gold medal performance this evening and also looking forward to leaving this competition with positive feedback from the panel to prepare us for our Grand Prix season this year.
Again, I’m sorry followers for the late update the time flies here in the mountains. I’ll be updating you with another blog today so stay tuned for some pictures to follow and potentially my first video blog!
Signing off for now,
Daniel