British Synchro Championships 2019

Nottingham Motorpoint Arena hosted the British Synchro Championships in January 2019, and we were looking forward to this fantastic competition, streamed for the first time live on BBC sport.

Fielding a team of 12 skaters, 6 of whom were new to the team, we were ready and raring to go with the latest version of our ‘Lone Digger’ routine. We had a slight mishap on our first warmup run, but nailed it on the second, so we were feeling good!

Unfortunately when it came to the comp itself, we had a bit of a nightmare! During a moment’s disorientation transitioning between our mixed element and our pivoting block and a slight issue with the positions coming out of the first element, half the team found itself split and in the wrong position. Given the scale of the issue, it took some time to regroup, and the team carried on with the circle, correcting their individual positions as they did so. Repercussions unfortunately affected the intersection too. Determination shone through, though, and the team delivered a fantastic wheel to finish the program.

Needless to say, this was a pretty awful experience! We were gutted for our new skaters who had missed the opportunity to feel the elation of a good skate, and the chance to show all the hard work that we had put in over many months.

Here are some things we learned though:

  • Having a nightmare performance will cure your competition nerves forever. Nothing can ever be that bad!
  • We got through it together. It was horrible, but we kept going. We are closer and stronger as a result.
  • It may not feel like it at the time, but eventually you’ll laugh about it!

Another thing we learned – the synchro community is absolutely amazing! The commentators were lovely and mentioned the strength of our practice in the morning. We also posted about our experience on instagram and received such a lovely comment from former world competitors Team Zariba from Aberdeen, which gave us such a boost.