News

British skating welcomed some good news this month: Junior skaters, Peter-James Hallam, and dancers, Sophie Jones and Richard Sharpe, brought home two medals from the Ice Challenge competition in Graz, Austria.

Opens

The Finns were delighted, and a little surprised and puzzled that the Olympic champions, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, chose to debut this season’s routines at this very efficiently run but minor-league event.

Feature

I have been writing about ‘Being A VIP,’ a framework for seeing where you want to go and how to get there. We started with ‘Being’ (getting clear of stuff and ready to move out) then V for Vision (what you see is possible).; third was ‘I’ for Inspiration and Innovation (who inspires us and how can we do things better).

Opens

Nottingham area skaters came up with two first places at the prestigious Tikkurilla Trophy 2011 international in Helsinki, Finland. As well as the host nation, there were skaters from Russia, Romania, Estonia, Italy and Sweden taking part as well as the UK skaters.

Review

Most people will remember seeing Karen Coombes and Karen O’Neil presenting their rockered inline skate on BBC’s Dragons’Den in 2009. Since then, their original idea and concept, now re-christened as ‘Off-Ice Skating’, has developed a life of its own and now the Karens are working with coach and former Olympic competitor (Calgary 1988), Neil Cushley, to provide education and training for Off-Ice Skating coach wannabes.