2015 Irish National Championships Mar 15

http://isai.ie/

The home page of the Ice Skating Association of Ireland announces the recent completion of Irish Nationals., held in Belfast this year. It shows photos of the medalists.

A complete article may be found here:
http://isai.ie/2015/03/15/irish-national-figure-skating-championships-2015/#more-2060

Clara Peters made an impressive comeback after several months away from competition rehabilitating an ankle injury. Skating to the “Downton Abbey” soundtrack for her free skating, Peters went for a triple Salchow and also landed two beautiful double Axels. She finished her routine to great applause and was awarded her sixth national Senior Ladies title.

Conor Stakelum also performed exceptionally to win his second Senior Men’s gold. Stakelum landed three different varieties of triple jumps (flip, toe loop and Salchow) in his free programme and displayed the great technical strides he has made in working in Dundee, Scotland with Simon Briggs and his coaching group.

The Junior Ladies was contested between Ciara Hoey and Fianait Bligh over two segments. After the short programme, Hoey held a slight lead over Bligh with it all to play for in the free which was the finale for the championships as a whole. Bligh fought valiantly all the way to the end of her routine, but it was not quite enough to catch Hoey. This is Hoey’s second Junior Ladies title in a row and Bligh’s silver is her first national championships medal.

Click to expand...

Hadn't realised Clara was injured. That would explain why we didn't see her at any Senior B's this season.

Here are the results in list form (unfortunately without scores)

I have to say, it is disappointing to see that nearly every competition had only 1 entry. But, there again, if you look further down the page at past results, that seems to be the norm.

Although, it is very encouraging that there are 2 Junior Ladies. Both of them are round about 17/18, and so will probably be moving up to Senior level soon. So it will be great to see some real competition for the Senior international slot.

Congratulations to everybody that took part.


Incidentally, some of you may have picked up that the Southern Irish Championships were actually held in Northern Ireland. That is because there are no longer any ice rinks in the South!

Over the past year or so, there has been a campaign to build a rink in the South.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Petition-to-build-National-Ice-Arena-in-Ireland/361902584011605

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/national-ice-arena-for-ireland

And the campaign has been getting support from some international skaters.

In January, the link was sent to some skaters via Twitter, and Robin Cousins, Mirai Nagasu and Misha Ge re-tweeted it.

About a month later, Fianait Bligh posted the link again on one of Misha Ge's instagram videos. (And a great video it is too! )


A couple of days after Fianait's efforts, John Kerr (whose mother is from Donegal) shared the link on Facebook, and it got a whole pile of "likes". And yours truly might have posted a reply...

Although I support the idea, I have never been one for signing petitions. But, if anybody out there would like to do so, I'm sure your support would be much appreciated.


And finally, a message from the ISAI Facebook Page:

Happy St. Patricks Day!!!!

CaroLiza_fan