Winter Games - Torino 2006                                    

We practised our ice-skating routine in the living room, putting together a sequence of toe-loops, axels and a triple Salchow.  The coffee table had to go.  In fact, with that old thing out of the way, the room looked huge.  Mick had to tackle his boxes of stuff behind the sofa.  He’d dumped them there the day he moved in and still hadn’t got round to unpacking, even after all this time.  I don’t think he even knew what was in them any more.  At any rate he was managing OK.  We stacked them outside on the landing, at the top of the stairs.   He said he’d get around to sorting it all sometime, at the weekend maybe.  I could have made a remark but I stopped myself.  When you’re about to embark on a quest for world domination, it seems absurd to get agitated over domestic detail.  No sense in carping.  I could save that for later.   With the boxes out of the way we were able to push the sofa right back to the wall.  The computer got shifted into the bedroom to be on the safe side.  Mick switched on to Eurosport.  We watched it for a while.

            ‘I’ll never manage that triple Salchow,’ I said. 

            ‘Small beginnings,’ Mick said, ‘don’t be daunted.  We’ve got until Vancouver 2010, plenty of time to nail it.’

            So we started by working on our foot positions, shifting the weight from one leg to the other with little hops, side by side, aiming to stay in step.  The carpet was awkward; our feet kept sticking to the surface making it impossible to glide, but I drew the line at pulling it up.  I wasn’t about to give the landlord any excuse to grab my deposit come the day we might decide to move on. 

            ‘Lets keep it simple at this stage,’ I said, ‘pare the routine down, walk through our moves, get the timings right and then we can work up to the jumps.’

            In the background, Robin Cousins was waffling on about inside edges and outside edges and flips.  We didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but his voice was definitely inspirational.  He really fired us up.  Then the coverage switched to the Luge and we got a bit distracted – Mick started banging about in the kitchen looking for a tin tray.  He couldn’t find one. 

He came in with the roasting dish but it was too greasy, I can never shift those little bits of stuck on potato.

We took a break for dinner.  I cooked up a vegetable balti, Mick’s favourite, with chick peas, sweet potato and cauliflower.  We saw off a couple of Naan breads and washed it all down with a drop or two of amber nectar.  Not a good idea as it turned out, skating on a full belly.  I decided that if we were going to take this up seriously, we’d have to have a proper lunch so that when we got home, we could devote our whole evenings to practising.  Just have a bit of toast or something before bed.  We skated on; wind assisted, until we’d perfected our figure-of-eights.  Mick came up with a really good hold.  He gripped me around the waist, bent me right over backwards until my head rested on his foot and then leaned over me all the while twirling us both round in slow circles.  We were a bit wobbly.  He had no choice but to compliment me on my elegant arm position. 

‘Grade three ballet.’  I said.

‘Yeah?  I did karate, I’m a tenth Dan’

‘What’s that?’

‘Fucked if I know, it was years ago.’

I wish I’d kept the ballet up.  And the flute, and St John’s Ambulance.  I wish I’d followed through on something.

The lift took several attempts.  Mick thought we should forget it, just leave it out, but, as I pointed out, it’s one of the required elements.

  ‘Get onto the ice and perform a routine missing out any of the compulsory moves and just see happens. Points plummet that’s what.  However good you are.’ 

We tried again.

‘You’ve got to trust me then,’ he said, as he manoeuvred himself into position holding out his arms to me.  ‘Come on chunky, go for it, take a leap.’ 

That was all very well for him to say but it was me kept bouncing off the bookcase.  Then it happened.  We did it.  He caught me just right and got me up there, balanced on his shoulder in one incredibly smooth movement.   He started to spin.  I felt fantastic.  I was flying.  It was a pity about the Tibetan incense holder.  After all that effort we flopped down onto the sofa mad with success.  We scored ourselves four point five (point deduction for breakages) and smoked a couple of roll-ups.

‘This’ll have to go,’ I said, pointing to the stubs in the ashtray.  I’d lost count of the times one or the other of us has tried to give it up.  Here was the perfect opportunity.

‘I don’t see why,’ he said.   ‘We could fly the flag for Olympic ice-dance  smoking champions everywhere.  Take a stand against the anti-brigade.  Anyway, all Russians smoke. All artists smoke.’

‘How come we’re Russian all of a sudden?’  I said.  The only thing Russian about us is the occasional vodka and tonic.  I didn’t like to remind him that we worked in IT in Croydon.  Some artists we are.

  ‘What about sex then?’ I said.

 ‘Now?’ He came back, quick as a flash.  Mick’s nothing if not predictable.  As a matter of fact it had crossed my mind.  He was leaning forward with his hands on his knees breathing hard, licks of hair plastered to his face and a sweaty patch spreading across the back of his t-shirt.  I was tempted.

‘I mean what about sex while training,’ I said.  ‘Like footballers and boxers.  They have to save their strength or something, especially right before a big match don’t they?  We’ll have to watch that.’

‘You can’t compare skating to boxing,’ he said. ‘I mean you need strength sure, but skating isn’t merely a sport, it’s an art form.  It’s all about interpretation’. 

He came and stood right up close facing me.  I could feel the heat coming off his skin.  He smelled of earth and tobacco.

‘You put two skaters together right, total strangers working out a routine, something lyrical, poetic and the first thing they have to work on is body language, eye contact, establish an emotional connection.’ 

I moved back to the sofa.   Some things are better for the wait I thought.  I was determined to finish the routine. 

‘Sex would definitely help to inject some sensuality into the presentation.   Performance enhancing I’d call it.’ 

I thought he had a good point; a lot of skaters are married actually, but I still had my doubts.  I just couldn’t picture Torvill and Dean in bed, never mind all that Bolero swaying about.

It was getting late.  We needed to put our moves to music.  Mick started riffling through the CD’s.  I voted for a classical piece, something balletic, building up to a slow climax.  He thought we should speed things up, have some beats.  He said the faster you move across the ice the easier it is to work up enough momentum to put the flashy bits in.  That was fine in theory but I was the one kept crashing into the door and bruising my shins.  He doesn’t know his own strength sometimes.

‘What about the transitions,’ I pointed out (I was really getting the hang of the terminology), ‘the in-between the flashy bits.   We need variation, to slow it down here and there.  Maintain contact but let the routine flow.’  

It was a pure flash of inspiration when he pulled Michael Jackson off the rack. 

‘Here we go,’ he said.  ‘This is what we want, a nice retro dancey track.‘  He started singing (he’s got a terrible voice) ‘ I wanna rock with you da da, something something, da  da.’ 

‘Dance the night away.’ I finished the phrase.  ‘Fanfuckingtastic.  Funky, sexy, just the right tempo.  God it makes me want to move. ‘He was so great, before he got weird.’  I said.

We played the CD right through from start to finish.  It reminded me of my sister’s wedding reception.  I was still in primary school.  They booked a disco for the evening in an upstairs room at The George.  My Aunty Jean led the conga line down through both bars and twice round the car park.  It was a fantastic night.  They’re divorced now.

            ‘How come there’s always a conga at wedding receptions?’ Mick asked.

            ‘Traditional.  You have to have one it’s the law.  Its one of those things you’re born knowing how to do.’

            ‘What aunties are for I suppose.’

            We got up and did a bit of a conga round the flat, then got back to the serious stuff.

Once we’d cracked the routine; music, jumps, lifts, we had to give some consideration to costumes.  The gala was on the box by then, coverage was nearly over.   All the medal winners were coming out and doing their thing.  We worked out our own points system based on their outfits, trying to get some ideas.  Mick liked the fleshy-meshy inserts that make the girls look practically starkers from a distance.

‘From a distance yeah,’ I sneered, ‘but up close it just looks like a few sequins sewn onto a surgical stocking to me.’

He gave a nil to anything vaguely ethnic and I gave a nil to anything with ruffled sleeves.   Applying our criteria, the top lot wouldn’t have won a friggin thing.

‘Slutskaya.’ Mick laughed, when Irina came out.  She’s ladies gold medallist.  ‘That’s a hell of a descriptive name.’ 

She skated in a turquoise body suit with silver fringing. 

‘I bet she bought that in Primark.’

‘Nah, her granny ran it up.’

‘I just can’t make up my mind what look we should go for, Oleg.’ I said after we’d watched it all. 

We’d sorted out our names by then.  Mick fancied being called Igor but that put me in mind of Boris Karlof and Hammer Horror flicks so he settled on Oleg.    He wanted to call me Ludmilla.  I hated that.  I hated the Lud part.  Just the sound of it, Lud, I don’t know why.   He can be cruel Mick, sometimes.  I know why he chose it – it sounds fat.  It sounds like the name some fat Russian chambermaid would have.  Tatiana was my first choice.  I stuck out for it.  We put our own surnames together with a hyphen.   Oleg and Tatiana Monk-Jones.  It  sounded exotic, a little bit Eurovision.

‘Shall I go puff-ball or long and floaty with a handkerchief hem?’ 

‘I’m not fussed.  Whatever.’  Mick said.  ‘Whatever’s easiest to move in I should think.  Those trailing bits look great floating about the ice but I wouldn’t want something flying across my face just as I’m going to lift you up.’

‘Good point.  You might drop me again.’

One thing we both agreed on straight away was that weird tights-over-the-boots thing.  That was an absolute no-no.  We didn’t like that look at all, especially on the really tiny skinny girls.  It made them look as if they had club feet.  I was determined to have white boots.  In the end we plumped for a black on white, white on black combination with diagonal slashes, like lightening.  Black’s much more slimming on the screen.  I need all the help I can get in that department.  I don’t need Mick reminding me about that.  Mid-length layers for me and a sleeveless all-in- one for Oleg we decided.  To show off his muscles.

‘Is it all worth it?’  Mick sounded flat.

We felt tired.  We’d gone about as far as we could go by then.

 ‘The hours of training, the sacrifices, the commitment.   Just for that one moment on the podium.  And then it’s all over.  A medal, a bunch of wilting lilies, a wave to the crowd and bang - finito.  Back to reality.’  Mick was bored.  He bought the coffee table back in, pulled the sofa forward to it’s usual position right in front of the screen and plumped up the cushions.  ‘There’s no point in doing anything once the fun’s gone out of it.’

‘That one moment though,’ I said.  ‘Imagine being the best in the world.  The intensity of it would be unique.  How many people drift through life with nothing to show for it?  We’d always have the memory of the experience.  Whatever happened to us after, we’d be there in the record books, in black and white.’ 

‘An ex-champion, so what? There’s always another one and another one.’

I switched the TV off.  We were quiet for a bit, thinking it all through.  I leaned my head on his shoulder.  He put his hand on my thigh.

‘You won’t leave me will you.’ I said. 

His reply was just a fraction late in coming.

‘Course not’, he said, ‘Oleg and Tatiana Monk-Jones.  That’s us.  Partners.’

I never did buy the boots, or make the dress.  In fact, we gave skating up.   We’d really got into the Games while it was news, but Mick was right; once it was all over we didn’t give it another thought.  2010 seemed a long way off.  Telly went back to normal; soaps, make-over shows, celebrities talking bollocks and chefs whipping up four-course meals from a chicken leg and a bunch of rocket.  We got sucked back into our regular routine.  I suppose it was the commitment thing that held us back.  You’ve got to be certain.  You’ve got to be one hundred per cent focused.   It’s a huge investment.  Not just time and money but all the emotional ups and downs and no guarantees that you’ll make it even after all the years of training.   We did have a little moment though.  A taste of success. I’ll always remember skating with Mick.  Potentially he’s a great partner, a world beater.  It’s just the ordinary day-to-day stuff he’s crap at.

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