Anna Cappellini: “Isn’t it just wonderful that we can enjoy watching Daisuke Takahashi skate again? Hopefully, he’s setting an example for others to try this path.”
Former Italian ice dancer and now a coach Anna Cappellini about Daisuke Takahashi doing ice dance.
source: insideskating.net
What about the skaters that used to be single skaters when you and Luca where competing, and now they turned to ice dancing – and I am talking about Daisuke Takahashi here… What about that? It’s a massive change…
Anna Cappellini: It is, it is!
And it’s not for everybody – ice dancing requires a whole different type of training.
And you need to be ready for that: you don’t have the excitement of jumps anymore, you just have to spend hours and hours and hours working on your stroking position – and just working on being in a couple, and not just minding your own business [smiling].
So it’s not for everybody, but it’s not impossible either, like Daisuke is showing us.
Of course, he was always a skater revered by all of us for his amazing skating skills and masterful interpretations, so he had a great starting point. But it still is a different discipline, so the concentration and the tricky parts, the ones that you are most likely to make a mistake, are completely different in ice dancing. Some steps may not look hard to the single skaters or the fans, but they are in fact, and an ice dancer knows how to pay extra attention on those.
About that, I remember how I used to complain to Ondrej (Hotarek – Italian pair skater and Anna’s husband) about how hard it was for me to watch him compete, and do all those dangerous pair skating elements, and he once told me something very true: It is much worse to watch YOU compete, because in ice dance you might fall at any moment!
But it’s not impossible to make the switch – like Kana and Daisuke are proving to the world right now, getting greater results every season and, hopefully, setting an example for others to try this path.
I mean, you wouldn’t be able to pick up single skating at 25, at 20 – with ice dancing, you still have the possibility, but you have to be really able to almost completely change your brain for ice dance.
And it’s good to know that if this side of skating is what you like and enjoy, if you enjoy skating skills, if you enjoy dancing, there could be another opportunity for you.
[smiling] And isn’t it just wonderful that we can enjoy watching Daisuke Takahashi skate again?
Related topics: Anna Cappellini Luca Lanotte, Kana Muramoto Daisuke Takahashi
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