I’m heading out to Bismark, North Dakota from March 26-28 to run a Grassroots to Champions seminar with Sheila Thelen (G2C alumni and inventor of Champion Cords). It’s really fun working with new kids and meeting new coaches. I will also be performing an exhibition program on the March 26th to Josh Groban’s “Remember When It Rained” to help kick off the weekend!
I have lost so much sleep these past couple weeks from watching all of the live skating! I’ve been continually been telling all my friends at school to watch! I love seeing the sport and skaters get such great recognition.
Congratulations to Evan Lysacek on winning a gold medal for the USA! Also, to Johnny Weir for skating two clean programs–his long program in particular was one of my favorite Olympic programs.
I was really inspired by so many of the athletes…the strength of Joannie Rochette to skate to a bronze medal in her home country a few days after her mother’s death has been undoubtedly the most courageous Olympic moment. It was great to see the support and compassion that the media, audience, etc respected her with.
I thought Yu-Na Kim was flawless! It was great to see her reaction after two clean programs. Rachael and Mirai were awesome–as were Mao’s 3 triple axels (short and long combined)!! I feel like the top 7 or so performances were worthy of Olympic medals.
Seeing Shen and Zhao receive their Olympic Gold Medals was great–they have completed dozens of gold medal performances over the years, so this was a perfect way to finish a career for them. Both US teams were great! Amanda Evora learned to skate at Fairfax Ice Arena, my home rink–represent! haha
As for Ice Dance, I thought Tessa and Scott’s flamenco original dance was amazing. Congrats to Meryl and Charlie on a silver medal performance–this was another event with more than one gold medal worthy performance. Maybe I’m impartial, but I thought all three US teams skated particularly well haha I roomed with Evan Bates when he and his partner Emily won Jr Worlds, so to see them skate clean was great!
All in all, this Olympics definitely lived up to expectations and left me feeling really inspired (as you can probably tell)!!
Tommy placed 13th at the US Nationals and Olympic Qualifying Event last week. He ended on a high note, receiving a great ovation from the audience for his long program performance to Don Quixote that placed him 11th in that portion of the event.
I’m all settled in Spokane for Nationals! I got in last night and compete Friday night and Sunday afternoon. My practices have been fun so far–there was a pretty good audience today. I skate 23rd out of 23 skaters tomorrow night. It will be after 11:00PM by the time I compete, so I’m trying to stay up right now! Just got back from a nice bar&grill across the street, but I ate some of the groceries I just bought at the food store right before heading over…not the best idea in retrospect.
My brother-in-law, Andy, helped me edit a bunch of my skating clips into a video. The music is “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini, one of my favorite artists. I’ve been a fan since his first CD and saw him live this July! The original exhibition to “New Shoes” was choreographed by myself in spring 2009. I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks for visiting my new website! I’d like to thank Andy Eiche for helping me to set up a more personal way to share my skating online. The site is still a work in progress, so be sure to come back to check out updates and to keep up with my training!