2016 Lombardia Trophy Blog #3

Free Dance Day

Today was our final day here in Bergamo. I got to sleep in, aside from being woken up by Jason straightening his hair. He had an early practice and I woke up thinking there was a fire because of the smell, and sound, of his hair burning. Julia and I had a pretty solid practice and were ready to get the free over with. We came back to the hotel and I took my usual pre-competition nap. We went to the rink, warmed up, and finally took the ice for our free dance. We were happy with how we skated overall, but knew we made a few mistakes technically. Unfortunately, our technical score took a huge hit. We ended in fourth overall, which wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for, but we’re still happy with our skating.

Later our team leader, Kathleen Harmon, tried to organize a team dinner. Mirai, Jessica, and Josh went to Milan for the day, since they were done competing, and Jason and Grant had already gone out to dinner with their coaches. It ended up just being Julia, Max, and me who went to dinner with the rest of the coaches and team leaders. We finally got to celebrate Julia’s birthday because Kathleen told the restaurant about it. They turned off all of the lights in the place, played birthday music, and came out with a piece of cake with a sparkler in it.  

After dinner Julia told us she knew a really good place to get gelato nearby. She said it was a 3-minute walk, and her mother interjected saying it was more like 5. Max and I followed her lead only to find out she had no clue where she was going. 30 minutes later we finally found someone who spoke English well enough to help us find gelato. It was good but definitely not worth the walk.

On the way back, Max decided he would take the lead since he thought he knew the town better. Turns out he was just as great a lead as Julia was. Close to 50 minutes after gelato, we finally made it back to our hotel. Julia and I are back and packing for our flights home tomorrow.

I’d like to thank U.S. Figure Skating for this amazing opportunity and Ice-dance.com for allowing me to share my experience.

Until next time, ciao!

Damian