Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler: “No one will remember the medals. In ice dance, it’s primarily about conveying emotions.”
Interview with Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler for Forbs.
original source: life.forbes.cz dd. Feb 16th 2025 by Petra Cieslar
In the interview posted on Forbes, Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler spoke about their career
They were born into a sport-oriented family — their mother was a national handball player, and their father was involved in hockey and later boxing, so they were engaged in sports from an early age: trying swimming, gymnastics, or tennis.
“We did everything together,” says Filip Taschler, who is two years older. “We got into skating thanks to our mother’s friend, who sometimes looked after us. She was a figure skating coach, took us along to the ice rink, where we subsequently tried the beginners’ group. And somehow, we just stuck with it,” he adds.
Taschler siblings began skating in Brno but sor several years now, they have been training at a center in northern Italy’s Egna, where coaches Matteo Zanni and Barbora Reznickova Silna. The reason for moving from the Czech Republic abroad is prosaic. Although there are many ice rinks in Czech Republic, figure skating is overshadowed by hockey.
“In the Czech Republic, there is a lack of facilities and coaching capacity. Many great coaches have left for abroad, where they earn significantly better money than here,” explains one of the reasons for moving abroad, Filip Taschler. “In Brno, we were also constantly competing for hours with hockey players,” adds his younger sister Natalie.
Speaking about the transition from single skaters to a ice dance, Filip mentioned that he was particularly driven by the fact that he was never a big jumper, while Natálie was motivated by a hand injury she suffered in gymnastics, which she had long practiced alongside figure skating.
“Leaving family, friends, and everything you know to go abroad is, of course, difficult. But our parents have always supported us,” say the siblings, noting that after half a year in the USA, they moved together with their coaches to Egna, where today operates a figure skating dance school hosting several pairs from around the world.
Speaking about last year’s Worlds where the Taschler siblings finished fifteenth, with a failed lift, Filip said, “It was the mistake of our lives, but I think it pushed us a lot. Looking back, we remember the Canadian competition as one of the best.”
“No one will remember the medals,” agree the siblings, adding that in ice dance, it’s primarily about conveying emotion, the intangible side that makes figure skating a discipline balancing on the edge of sport and art. “According to us, that is what love for the sport is about. We try not to think too much about the placements and performances of our competitors, as it creates unnecessary pressure,” believes Natalie Taschler.
Whether the Czech pair will manage another Olympic cycle will be seen after the 2026 games. The Taschler siblings, as they admit, are not great proponents of the trend where we also see skaters over thirty-five years old in ice dance. “It does not support the natural generational exchange and also greatly limits personal life. We have set our limit at thirty years,” announce the siblings.
Related topics: Natalie Taschlerova Filip Taschler
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