utako answered! cool

i asked the canadian pair utako wakamatsu and jean-sebastien fecteau how they met and this was utako's reply. just thought i'd share:

Well, we both were competing skate america 2001. For
me(utako), I represented japan as single, for jean, he
represented canada with his X-partner. and that time,
our coach, Richard saw my skating over there, and he
thought that I might will be good for pair skater
because my flexibility, hight and _expression. So
Richard spoke to one of japanese coach, and he told me
about it, then I tried to go to montreal to try out
with jean for 2 weeks. and I thought about if I wanna
go or not to go montreal again... finally I decided to
go back to montreal to do pair skating with jean.

for me, it was first time to do pair skating. I had
never done pair skating before... no experience. but
for jean, he had already 2 partners, and 17 years
experience. So first of all he tought me how to do
lift ,death spiral and so many stuff from the
beginning... it took few months but I learned pretty
quickly ,so once I got used to it, my body knows how
to do it, so I became enjoy pair skating little by
little!

That is the reason that we met each other. We never
expected these situation that we will skate
together!!!!! Life is so funny and so
unexpected....that was wonderful...!!!

Thanks for sharing that, Kemisha. She sounds sweet. I wonder if they will stay together, or if he will try to make the Olympics with a new partner?

Mathman

Sadly, the skinny from the Canadian contingent at Worlds is that Wakamatsu found out that she can't have dual citizenship, and, understandably, she does not want to give up her Japanese citizenship. Although Fecteau looks very young, he'll be 30 this summer, and to create another partnership at this point is not impossible, but is a bit of a stretch, particularly so close to the Olympics. (Although, except for Galler-Rabinowitz/Mitchell and Gregory/Petukhov, that is the same situation all of US dance teams have found themselves in. Too bad the Munanas represented Mexico at Worlds )

hockeyfan228 said:

Too bad the Munanas represented Mexico at Worlds )

Click to expand...

Indeed! Just like all the Mexican skaters, they wuz robbed, at least in scoring. I see them as a joyous couple on the ice with great edging. Maybe they just don't have this 'passion' which seems to be a required factor in scoring for the win.

Joe

Very cool. I sent them an email as well, inquiring about Utako's kimono costume and how she got into it. I am making one for Adult Nationals. He was gracious enough to email me back with the details. I thought that was so nice.