Free Dance


By Helga Dobor
Photos © Helga Dobor

Krisztina Barta, Ádám Tóth (HUN)

Nagy Sándor (coach):

We achieved our goal here, being among the top 24 skaters. The Bulgarians who had withdrawn were behind us, so didn’t effect us. With the original dance and the free dance I’m satisfied, but unfortunately they messed up the compulsory dance. If they skate that as well as they do at practices and as the judges saw, then we could start right then from the 20 th place, and we could place 19 th too. I think we can’t wish for more than we got! Thank you very much!

And how do you feel yourself of the program?

Krisztina Barta: The program was really good, I think it was our best program at a competition in this season. We gave everything to the program and we are satisfied.

Ádám Tóth: I’m also very satisfied and can’t find the words - J I’m very tired but I think we skated a very good program.

And what do you think of the whole competition?

Krisztina Barta : Mostly we are satisfied, the compulsory didn’t go well, everything was new for us and we were very nervous about it.

Leonie Krail, Oscar Peter (SUI)

What do you think of your program?

Leonie Krail : We are satisfied with lots of things, and a few things could be better, but it’s always the same. We made a mistake, but I think we did the program well, I’m satisfied, I think. – smiles.

What did you expect from the competition?

Oscar Peter : At least we could show to everybody, what we learnt in the past year, because we couldn’t skate last year - that was a bad season. And we are happy about the whole competition, that we could skate again, they saw us again and that we skated again together. We did what we wanted.

Leonie Krail : Anyway, we couldn’t get more! We wanted to show that we are here. This season was very new for us, as we missed the last whole season.

Are you satisfied?

Leonie and Oscar answer quickly, together: Yes – and they smile.

What do you expect from the worlds?

Oscar Peter: We want to do the final. Of course.

Christina Beier, William Beier (GER)

What do you think of the competition?

Christina Beier: You are always relieved when you’ve finished a competition. It wasn’t so easy to skate because I have a cold. Considering that, it wasn’t bad. We didn’t expect that our placement would be as low as it is, but we have accepted it for this competition and we beat the Ukrainians (Beknazarova-Zuev) in the Free Dance. We can only hope, that we’ve presented ourselves well and that proved that we’re back in action and that we can come back stronger next year.

Phillipa Towler-Green, Phillip Poole (GBR)

Are you satisfied with your program and with the competition?

Phillipa Towler-Green : We are rather disappointed, but we are happy to be in the top twenty.

Your freedance is great, the audience enjoyed it very much!

Phillipa Towler-Green: It’s a new program, we changed the old one and I’m happy that the audience likes it!

Alexandra Zaretski, Roman Zaretski (ISR)

What do you think of the competition?

Roman Zaretski: This was our best competition of the season so far. We prepared well and we showed everything we can do. In this competition we aren’t really satisfied with the levels - we got higher levels in previous competitions.

Nathalie Pechalat, Fabian Bourzat (FRA)

What do you think of your program?

Nathalie Pechalat: It was a bit hard to go out for the Free Dance because of the lack of practice after Fabian’s surgery. It’s physically difficult. But it’s good that we fought until the very end and had a good competition without any major error. Considering that we started training only ten days before, I’m very pleased that we have come, although we would have wished to achieve a higher placement.

Fabian Bourzat : Yesterday we wanted to move up, today we just wanted to do a good job. We didn’t really think about a placement today. This is not the end yet we still missing a level on the footwork, and physically we can improve. We can improve our score at Worlds.

You talked with Maxim Shabalin during the practice about your surgery…

Yes, we were exchanging glances at practice and we know that the other one is also hurting. We understand each other.

Sinead Kerr, John Kerr (GBR)

What placement do you expect now?

John Kerr: To be honest, we’ll be probably end up in sixth place.

Have you recovered from the fall?

John Kerr: It’s always hard, but I think we handled it relatively quickly. And it happens to everyone and all you have to do is get up and get on with it.

Isabelle Delobel, Olivier Schoenfelder (FRA)

What do you think of your program?

Olivier Schoenfelder: I guess we skated well tonight. We tried to give all the power we have. We are happy with what we did.

Isabelle Delobel : We are not European Champions tonight, but in spite of all the stress, we enjoyed performing and it was a moment of pure happiness to perform this dance tonight, even if it didn’t pay off for the gold medal.

Will you change something for the Worlds?

Isabelle Delobel : We will think about that next week. We will watch this competition from video and then think about that.

How do you feel after seeing Domnina and Shabalin’s scores?

Isabelle Delobel: We are a bit disappointed because we won at European’s last year and now we didn’t. Anyway, we did good job from the beginning of the event. That is life - that is sport. Fair play.

Oksana Domnina, Maxim Shabalin (RUS)

What were your thoughts at the end of your program?

Oksana Domnina: We just thought at the end of the program, it’s over. It was a very difficult competition for us, as Maxim’s health was not the best. We hoped to win. As I said yesterday, everything would be decided on the Free Dance. I want to thank Maxim. Only he knows how difficult it was. It was better in this situation to skate after the French. The judges saw how they skated and everything depended on us and on how we would skate.

Maxim Shabalin: It was very hard. This was the most difficult competition of my career.

Federica Faiella, Massimo Scali (ITA)

Massimo Scali: We are very happy, we did a good job at these Europeans, especially after the last season. We were more ready mentally to fight for a medal. It was hard for us to skate last in the group. It was difficult to keep our focus. I think we did a great job in the Free Dance.


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