Hello from Sheffield,

So today was the day of the free dance. We had a practice in the morning at 10:30 a.m. which was going really well. The dress was fixed and everything was working out good. Also the critical lift (in which we fell in the qualification) was perfect.

After the practice we relaxed and stayed in the Hotel, (also because the weather outside was horrible). It was raining with a little bit of snow, cold and windy.

Another amazing day is starting!!! Finally the competition!

Practice was really good. Our starting number was #3 after our training mates Marco & Charlene.

The ice was just a bit busy cause of the five couples on the ice, but everybody survived. This year is really difficult due to the new circular no touching step sequence because everybody is doing either clockwise or anti-clockwise.

We have to say unfortunately that the food in the hotel is not the best we ever had, but apart for this little complaint, we are fed…;)

When we came to the ice rink one hour before our short dance started, the opening ceremony was going on. We saw John & Sinead Kerr in the group. They always look great on the ice!!! The rink was crowded and was lovely to see all those kids cheering for all the skaters!

Hi everybody,

Yesterday was a pretty easy day for us…’cause we had no competition. We had two times practice. The practice in the morning was the first practice in the practice rink which is also nice, the ice is good and some people came to watch. We were practicing short dance and we rather enjoyed it.

We had lunch with our coach Barbara Fusar Poli, our Italian team mates Marco & Charlene, our German teammates Nelli & Alex, and some other skaters having lunch in the hotel. The food here is unfortunately not the best, but it's fine anyway. After lunch we walked a bit in the city and got a little impression of Sheffield. It's a really nice city and I think we were just not lucky with the weather because it was raining a bit. In the second practice, we did again short dance in the main rink.

The senior ice dance event at the 2012 U.S. Figure Skating Championships is an embarrassment of riches. Two of the three teams from the 2011 World Figure Skating Championships podium highlight a field of skaters who possess too many medals to count. With relationships and former partnerships that intersect and intertwine more than the most elaborate spider's web, the athletes on the roster this week in San Jose, Calif., will show the audience why ice dance has become the top discipline in the United States. The downside to all of this talent? Too many outstanding teams will go home without a national medal.

Hello everybody!

Our long day started with wake up at 6 a.m.! We had a nice breakfast and we took the bus for our practice. All judges were there but, unfortunately, since it was so early in the morning, not a lot of public.

We skated really well, self-confident and relaxed. After practice we went back to the hotel and we took a nap.

IDC is pleased to have Germany's Tanja Kolbe & Stefano Caruso blogging for us from the 2012 European Championships.  

• Tanja & Stefano's Blog Gallery (photos coming soon)

Day of arriving and First Day of practice

Hello everybody,

We are the ice dance couple Tanja Kolbe & Stefano Caruso and last time we were reporting from the international Ice Skating Competition in Finland. It was a pretty dramatic competition for us and we hope the reports from the European Championships will be exciting too -- but hopefully not that dramatic. :)

We arrived yesterday, 21.01.2012, in Manchester and from there we were brought by a bus 2.5 hours to the Hotel Jurys Inn in Sheffield. The flight was already very exciting, because it's extremely windy here and we came in a small plane from Milan. So when we wanted to land, the plane was basically thrown around in the air and it could hardly land. We were all a little bit afraid to not even reach our destination.

Later in the afternoon we arrived in the hotel which is pretty nice and modern and very near to the city center. The rooms are small but nice. The only thing to criticize is that there is no internet in the rooms for free but at least there is in the lobby. In the evening we all (our teammates Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, our coach Barbara Fusar-Poli and the Italian Team leader Olga Gilardini) went to eat dinner in a nice Italian restaurant in the city. It was really tasty and nice, but I hope we will eat over the next days maybe something more English.