More cool stuff
from Olympic ice skaters

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column, the second of two parts, includes more information on Live and In Color, Smucker’s Stars on Ice tour, which skated its way into the Wachovia Center on March 13 to celebrate its 1,000th show. Plus, I have the rest of the interview with two world bronze medalists right from our neighboring state New Jersey, John Zimmerman and Kyoko Ina, and a brief review of the production itself.
Last week, I gave information about figure skater Scott Hamilton’s role in the Stars on Ice Tour, Kyoko’s and John’s beginnings and how they met.
As a team, Kyoko and John won: three U.S. national titles, several Grand Prix medals and a bronze medal at the 2002 world championships. However, their proudest competitive moment was their fifth place finish at the 2002 Olympic games in Salt Lake City, performing two electric programs.
Kyoko feels the Olympics is one highlight of her career. She said it is extremely difficult to achieve this level, even with hard work.
"You are talking about trying to qualify among all of the figure skaters in the United States," she said. "You are competing against thousands and thousands of skaters. It is an extremely difficult process. John and I knew that we were on the four-year Olympic plan."
John agreed that the Olympics were the highlight of his career, too.
"The performance we had at the Olympics was the highlight of our career and the culmination of four years of planning together what we wanted to get out of our partnership together," he said. "To realize all of the challenges and the adversity that we go through day in and day out skating through all of the competitions and trying to stay healthy. Then finally getting to the Olympics, staying healthy and being in good shape and representing our country. Then, on top of that, putting on one of the best performances of our lives."
John thought the hardest part was preparing for the Olympics.
"At the world championships the year before, we came in seventh place and we were disappointed in that finish. As a result we all made a pact within ourselves that we had to do something different and drastic," he said. "For myself from that day on I had to treat every day like the last day of my senior year in high school. Every day you go into the gym you wanted to make it like it was the last session that you were going to have. So, every day Kyoko and I trained as hard as we could. We never felt regret that we could have done more that day."
On the personal side: Both are interested in NASCAR. It should come as no big surprise that John had the biggest influence since he is from Alabama. Both agreed that right now they enjoy professional skating.
"Professional skating is based on entertaining the crowd, whereas amateur skating is technically driven where you have a panel of judges that you are trying to impress," he explained. "If they don’t like you, they can dictate your future sometimes on the scoreboard. There are a lot of technical requirements on the amateur side."
Kyoko and John stated they have always prided themselves on keeping the technical side going in their professional career.
"We try to keep exploring new, different moves while still sharpening our skills and trying to keep the audience entertained," both said.
Kyoko and John have developed a close association with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Together they donate their time working with children faced with life-threatening illnesses. Kyoko was featured on the Today Show helping Hurricane Katrina victims by building homes for Habitat for Humanity.
John declined to reveal his goals for the future because things are always changing. He isn’t sure what he will want to do but noted the most important thing over the next few years for he and his wife, Italian figure skating champion Silvia Fontana, is to start building their family. Professionally he just wants to "live in the moment."
John, represented by IMG Models, was featured in the 2003 Barneys New York spring catalogue, the cover of Outside Traveler magazine, and was in a 12-page photo spread for Spanish Vogue in late 2006.
Again, this year’s tour consisted of Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen; 2002 Olympic pair champions Jamie Salé and David Pelletier (Canada); world champion and six-time U.S. national champion Todd Eldredge; world champion and two-time Japanese national champion Yuka Sato; two-time world bronze medalist and three-time U.S. national champion Michael Weiss; world bronze medalists and three-time U.S. national pair champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman; six-time Canadian national champion Jennifer Robinson; three-time world pair champions and two-time Olympic bronze medalists Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao (China); and two-time world silver medalists and five-time Canadian national ice dance champions Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon.
The Live and In Color ice tour began with the entire cast minus Sasha skating to Robert Palmer’s Some Like it Hot and Palmer’s 1990 song Addicted to Love. However, immediately after this, Sasha glided out and the whole cast skated to Palmer’s song Simply Irresistible.
This year, Sasha took front and center as this was her first year with the tour. Also announced first year with the show was Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon prior to them skating to Fire.
Next, they had a cute skit shown on a large digital TV done with the Brady Bunch introduction with all the performers — Here’s the story, of well known skaters, skating live and in color. This was humorous to everyone in the audience. Todd Eldredge showed off his first class performance to Monty Python’s Spamalot, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, as he skated with speed and precision.
At one point during his performance a bucket of water was pouring down from the ceiling, and missing him of course. Sasha came shining through with a unique act. She skated without skates, to the music from Enchantment, with the assistance of four other male skaters. You read this correctly. She simulated skating like a graceful swan as she skated and performed acrobatics without ever touching the ice. This entails having great confidence in the other skaters. The audience went bananas over this.
Michael Weiss did his signature backward flip to the song Hero. Kyoko and John Zimmerman pair-skated to Shine on You Crazy Diamond. Kyoko is unbelievably flexible as she is thrown like a raw pizza dough into the air simply to come down for another round up.
Another unique performance by Todd Eldredge was to Nights in White Satin done in a Spanish version mixed with only a few verses in English. By the way, look out, Mark Wood from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra! Michael Weiss, performing in another group skate-skit as rock musicians, could have been Mark’s duplicate. Look to catch Stars on Ice in 2009.
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Answer to last week’s cryptogram: THE SPORT OF SKATING IS NOT ONLY A PHYSICAL WORKOUT, BUT A MENTAL ONE
Columnist William Feldman can be contacted by e-mail at wmkidscolumn@aol.com