相信论坛里有不少喜欢B/K的，他们也是我喜欢的选手之一。最近，比较忙没有时间写什么东西。
先转贴一篇关于他们的文章：http://www.globeandmail.com/serv ... o15/BNStory/Sports/
[B]Bourne and Kraatz[/B]
By BEVERLEY SMITH From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Kitchener, Ont. — Ice dancers live in a wacky world.
It’s a world in which it’s easy to stay humble, even if you’re a world champion.
Victor Kraatz, the world ice dancing champion, slept on a bench at Paddington Station in London for three days last June was on his way home from a holiday in Helskinki.
The station is around the corner from the YMCA, where Kraatz spent one night. He was stranded with 60, which doesn’t go far in London. For four days, Kraatz had to pinch his pennies. Yet three months earlier, he had ruled the world, at least in ice dancing.
Kraatz was the victim of a wildcat strike at Heathrow airport in London. He had to switch planes in London, but couldn’t find a soul who worked for British Airways because they had walked off the job. Since Kraatz couldn’t get his baggage, he spent four days in the same clothes, sleeping under newspapers.
This past Saturday night, Kraatz and ice dance partner Shae-Lynn Bourne found life’s flipside. Skating in Canada for the first time since winning the world gold medal in March, Bourne and Kraatz were met with several standing ovations at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, the site where they surprised with a win in the last year’s Grand Prix final, just before the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Along with members of the national skating team, Bourne and Kraatz were in Kitchener to skate a fund-raising performance for Skate Canada’s Athlete’s Trust, which provides financing for athletes going to skating competitions. The group raised about $20,000.
But Kraatz was painfully aware that he’s now an outsider, no longer a member of the national team. And he’s scrambling to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, now that his Olympic-eligible days are over. He’s now a pro athlete, and he hasn’t found the transition all that comfortable.
Since the world championships, Bourne and Kraatz have performed 22 times on a Tom Collins’ Tour of Champions throughout the United States. It wasn’t a hard schedule. Collins, the promoter, had to cancel a number of stops on the tour because of slow ticket sales. That was the result of several factors, including post-Olympic fan fatigue.
Kraatz admits that the interest in figure skating isn’t what it was even four years ago, and it has sagged significantly since the mid-1990s, when the focus was assisted by the soap opera of Tonya Harding’s antics.
These days, there isn’t much interest in ice dancing teams, even if they’re world champions. Many pro competitions have dried up, and the ones that have survived, tend to drop not only the ice dancing but pairs skating as well.
"There is less need for an ice dancing team now out there," Bourne said. "But it always has been like that."
Bourne and Kraatz have some future shows lined up, and they have spent their time preparing various exhibition routines.
After the summer tour, Bourne and Kraatz each took a holiday of about five weeks. They have never spent so much time apart. Kraatz spent two weeks in Vancouver, which he considers his hometown and 2 weeks in Helsinki, the native country of his fiancée Maikki Uotila.
Bourne spent a week in her hometown of Chatham, Ont., and a couple of weeks in Moscow. Then she easily started to slide into her new life as a coach and a choreographer alongside her companion Nikolai Morozov, whose work as a choreographer is much in demand worldwide.
During the summer, Bourne helped Morozov choreograph the new long program of the Canadian pair Anabelle Langlois of Grand-Mere, Que., and Patrice Archetto of Montreal.
Bourne said she is having an easier time moving into her new life because she gave it long and careful thought before her final competitive skate. She is moving into a re |
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提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
喧嚣卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
楼主
