Isabelle Guise (Otautau) and Ethan Alday  Ice Sports Southland skaters competed in Oberstdorf Germany last weekend. Their scores are just under the qualification mark for Junior Worlds in March.

They will get an opportunity to attempt to qualify for this in early February when they skate at the Egna Dance trophy in Northern Italy.   It is a long time since New Zealand had Junior Ice Dancers skating at this level.

Isabelle and Ethan are based in Novi, Michigan training under Igor Spilband and his team alongside members of Team USA, and USA junior champions and Junior World champions. They train 30 -35 hrs per week under 5 different coaches –  each having a different specialty.

The pair have sessions in strength and conditioning, lifting ( keeping your moving partner off the ice for up to 7 seconds at a time while rotating or travelling across the ice), choreography and dance, alongside their technical ice work.

Ice dancers skate close together, particularly with their feet and blades, and  they are judged on how they complete the technical elements, which includes how fast they are moving, the smoothness of their transitions and how much edge (or lean) there is on their blades.

Isabelle started skating in Gore when she was 11 and last January took an offered opportunity to skate with Ethan at the Novi rink organised by her Ice Sports Southland coach Helen Sutherland. The team has been unable to return to NZ as scheduled because of border restrictions, so they competed in the US for Ice Sports Southland this last year.

New Zealand Ice Figure Skating gave them the green light to represent New Zealand last October when they reached an approved Technical score.

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