Interview with Christina and Anthony.
We had the chance to interview Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko on their move to IAM to train under Scott Moir in London.
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0g4HVfdm2OQzZpKdb8O1Zx?si=defb41ff5e1344a5
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKui_xafyA8
We're interviewing Marjorie Lajoie & Tiffany Zagorski next.
Some highlights from our interview:
Your coaching switch to Ice Academy of Montreal’s extension skating school in Ontario to train under Scott Moir was the biggest thing in ice dance this spring so we are dying to know more about it.
In the last two years of their competitive career, Tessa and Scott talked a lot in interviews about how they took full ownership of their career and ran the show in all aspects of their skating.
QUESTION: In what ways has the move allowed you to claim ownership of your career?
Christina: Every decision we make is more of a team effort. It's not as much the coach telling us what to do or us saying what we want. It's really a collaborative effort and I think it's because we're working with such amazing people I think good things are going to come out of it.
Anthony: And I think taking ownership of our career, we really wanted to make this year collaborative with our new coaching stuff and wanted to put our print on our programs. We're given the opportunity to be ourselves more than ever before.
QUESTION: Walk us through how the differences between training in London compared to how your day-to-day training was in Novi, Michigan and just generally how this switch has been for you both.
Christina: In London our day is very structured, our schedule is made for us. There's a science behind everything we do it's not just working to work, which I feel is more logical and beneficial. So that's been the biggest change honestly, it's really night and day.
Anthony: Like every 15 minutes we know exactly what to do and work on. We're given a task at hand and we work very hard on it to complete it ever single day. I think that's the biggest difference from Novi and London is that structure and everything is done for us in terms of what we need to do.
Ceci: As an athlete I crave structure in every part of my life, it's really underestimated how much structure impacts training and preparation. That specific 15 minute chunk really helps you move on and progress.
Anthony: Even in the 15 minute increment Scott writes in capitals DO THIS, to really prove a point on what we have to work on.
QUESTION: What areas of your skating were you most excited to improve over the last couple of months with Scott and the extended IAM team?
Christina: Well their skating technique is pretty different. They have more of a British technique compared to the Russian technique that we are used to. We're still learning obviously they are just so fun to work with and they are such good coaches. We love working with them.
Anthony: We've really only had one style of the past 8-9 years and looking at skating in a different point of view is fun to expand on what we already know.
Ceci: Would you say your style still remains more Russian but you are implementing the British style and find a mesh of both Russian-British?
Christina: Our base is never going to go away so it's very much a mesh of the two.
