Margaglio: "I think we are losing part of ability in ice dance".

Maurizio Margaglio, born in 1974, is a name that means a lot for the Italian Figure Skating history: with his partner Barbara Fusar Poli he gained the only Italian Figure Skating Olympic Medal – a bronze in Salt Lake City in 2002. The Italian Ice Dance legend, after retiring in 2006, started to share his experience with the new talented generation of this sport. About two years ago Maurizio started a rewarding collaboration with the Finnish federation, that brought him to Helsinki to collaborate at first with the synchronised skating team “Rockettes”, four-time World Champions, and later also with the Finnish ice dancers. During this long interview - made in Zagreb during the European Championships - Maurizio opened a window onto his new life in Finland, his concept on Figure Skating and his future projects.


Maurizio, let us start with the European Championships. Tell us your views as a coach of the Finnish ice dancers Karmi/Lindholm.
"They have just started to attend their first high-level competitions, I began working with them last year and I am trying directing them towards a more professional approach, something that is not always very easy to convey to the athletes in Finland. You can only get to a turning point by working with an extremely professional behaviour: there is no other possible way, and sometimes it is difficult for them to understand that. It is obvious that where there is no tradition, where there aren't other pairs who can be an example, you have to start from scratch. And that is a bit my mission here. These two kids are improving, and they also have substantial room for improvement. Being here and qualifying (for the Free Dance) is already a big achievement, in fact what we obtained here has been very appreciated in Finland. I also received Susanna Rahkamo's compliments, almost as if we had won, and this is something that we are happy about. This was our goal, and we were able to accomplish it. The other ice dance pair, Lindholm/Kanervo, attended the last season's European and World Championships representing Finland. They, too, have improved a lot during the past two seasons and they didn't compete here because of less than a point difference. The Finnish Federation criteria for the European Championships focused on the average points of the last three competitions, and the difference was of just 0.50 point. In my opinion they also would have skated well here, they are slightly older (than the other pair) but the lack of tradition in the Finnish ice dance penalizes them too. Of course the lack of tradition causes a lack of ice dance technical coaches, there isn't a big culture of ice dance here, and that is the aspect I am working on in Helsinki."


If you talk about Synchronised Skating, on the other hand, the situation is completely different.
"Yes, the Finnish were able to do a great job in the past 25 years, and obviously now the results are clear to everyone because they are competitive at the highest level and have many young talents coming up. Every year the skating clubs can make a selection and decide which girls they want to take with them, and they have a good choice because there's a lot of competition in every club. Becoming part of a Senior team means being among the 20 best skaters of the whole club, and this club, during its life, has maybe had hundreds of skaters that tried to enter the team. This selection generates many teams made of elite skaters. Of course synchronised skating requires a different level of commitment, and perhaps that's why it is so appreciated and popular in Finland: it requires a daily commitment, the girls skate everyday and also do off-ice conditioning and so on, but you can also have time during the day to do something else. All of them are students or they have enough time to work, and that's why this sport is highly appreciated by public opinion and families. As a parent I can think of sending my daughter to the World Championships, and maybe she can even win it, but in the meantime she can obtain a degree, or work, have a life on her own and so on. On the contrary, in figure skating if you want to be among the best 20 skaters in the World you know that skating is all you have to do. Anything else is very difficult to carry on, that is the main difference. Concerning synchro skating, I started to work in Finland after the call of Kaisa Nieminen, coach of the Rockettes, and that's what I had been asked to do: “We want to skate like Ice Dancers skate”. This was my mission, and from this point I also started to give my input into the choreographies. Obviously Kaisa is still their main coach and she always has the last word about where to put every element. You need a high competency for this because in every change of block the coach is the one who knows where a line will go after having crossed with another one. My contribution mainly deals with the general choreography, on how to link the different parts of a program. And, of course, I also work a lot on technique. Rockettes had the opportunity to compete at the World Championships in Finland in 2011, so during the first year I collaborated with them I was already working with very experienced girls, as they were part of the World Team. In two seasons they changed 70% of the team members, so we are somehow starting from scratch with the new skaters but the level is high anyhow. Finntastic have been World Junior Champions for 6 years in a row, they are a very strong team. As I told you before, they have a very deep field and many young skaters coming up to replace the ones retiring, and it's a totally different World."


What are the differences in choreographing an ice dance and a synchro program? Where do you feel you have more freedom, in ice dance perhaps?
"They are two different kinds of freedom. In ice dance you have the story between a man and a woman, which you can endlessly develop and transform. Then you also have the concept of ballroom dancing, something that should be extremely important, or at least we Italians continue with this philosophy (of highlighting the ballroom dance), which is something not always followed by other schools, but in my opinion it is the correct path to take. Ice dance choreographies are usually based on this kind of approach. With a group of girls you have to do something different: there isn't any more the intimacy of a couple, showing love to each other etc. On the other hand you have a spectacular amplification of every movement: Every little choreographic detail of an arm movement, multiplied by 16 arms becomes a wonderful transition, or even only bending the legs altogether and then start again, those are things which are amplified by the number of skaters who execute them. Moreover, in my opinion, a beautiful aspect of synchro is being able to use abstract ideas. How could it be possible, with an ice dance pair, to describe a clock, for example? You can do that with a synchro team. Do you want to recreate the idea of a gust of wind? With a pair it's impossible, bit with the girls you can do it. You can make them look like as if the wind is moving them, and you get the impression that a gust of wind has passed among them. All of this gives you a huge freedom for your creativity."


Tell us something more about your new life in Finland, how have you organized your everyday life?
"I would like to add something before answering to your question: I have lived in many places during my life, maybe not for a long time, but what I have learned from these experiences is that wherever you go, life is not that different. At the end it all comes to sleeping, eating, moving from point A to point B and work. If besides that you can also have a family and a private life, of course it's even better, but that's the way it is in about every place around the World. So I can say that what I do in Helsinki is pretty much what I do when I am in Milan or in the USA. I often joke with the Finnish, because they always tell me “How can you live here, it's dark and cold!!” And I answer that it's not like they have a copyright on such things! We have short daylights and cold winters here too: I have lived for four years travelling between Milan and Val Gardena, and in the latter you have -20°, and snow for six months that starts to fall in October. The big difference for me now is to live in the city centre, Helsinki is a capital but it is also extremely people-oriented. I can get anywhere I circa 20 minutes. The city is organized such as you can easily find anything, public offices, restaurants, anything you may need. Of course living in a metropolis as Milan, or any other city that may be even bigger gives you different problems. In Milan, for example, getting around by car is terrible: in Helsinki you don't have this kind of problem. Of course there are many differences (between Finland and Italy), we are two nations that see things in a very different way, but we are trying to adapt and to understand their mentality, and little by little we are finding ourselves comfortable. At the end, anyway, my typical day is: wake up, get ready, take the kids to school, go to work and get home in the evening to relax a bit, something which is impossible until 9pm. Once the kids are sleeping I have one hour all for myself when I am able to watch the Italian news, as we are in the time zone ahead of Italy. The big difference in living abroad today rather than 15, 20 years ago is that now if you want you can maintain all the boundaries with Italy thanks to cable TV and especially Internet, where I can read al the newspapers I want and being constantly updated (on what happens in Italy)."


Let's talk a little bit more about ice dance: everybody is already talking about the next season's choice for the Short Dance: the Finnstep. It has been a controversial decision, some people don't approve the choice of a relatively new dance for a crucial season, the Olympic one. Someone else says it will not be easy at all to skate. What do you think?
"I think that for every Pattern chosen, someone will agree and someone will complain. In my opinion it simply is the choice of a Senior Compulsory Dance that is integrated into the Short Dance. If they had put Tango Romantica I would have been happy, if they had put Ravensburger I would have been happy, but then someone would have said that it would have been repetitive. I don't see a problem with it, I'd rather think whether it is appropriate to take the old Compulsory Dances and put them into the Short Dance, taking them out of their contest. But this thought is not only related to the Finnstep, but rather more on every Pattern Dance. On the contrary, among the Compulsories, Finnstep is one of those that is better related with ballroom dancing, to the real ballroom soul. I would like to see this aspect, the interpretation of a dance, particularly rewarded, and not only the edges perfection because in my opinion who wins in this discipline must be able to dance. This is at the base of my mentality, and I am extremely strict about it, otherwise it would have been called “Ice Technique”. I don't even think that bringing the ballroom dance judges here could help for the problem I was mentioning. I have worked a lot with ballroom dancers, amazing people, World Champions, but it was difficult for them to understand our needs, to interpret what we were bringing on the ice. When Barbara and I were working with them, in fact, we were asking them to show what they were able to do: we could then “translate” on the ice. Therefore, if you dance to Quickstep or Foxtrot, the ballroom dancer wants to see how you properly move your heels and toes. But you don't have this movement on the ice, you have a rigid blade under your feet, so what we do instead is a little jump to give the idea of that movement. We can't always dance on toes, otherwise we would always stop instead of skate. Another example is the “hold”: the arm position can be different in ballroom and ice dancing: we have to follow some specific Technical Rules requirements, but a ballroom dancer would not tolerate it: nevertheless this is “tolerated” on the ice, because dancing on a ballroom floor instead of an ice rink, where you skate at 20, 30 km/h, is way different. What I think is fundamental is “educating” to ballroom dance skaters, coaches and judges, everyone. The Technical Specialist should look at the steps and the judges should look at the actual dance: this, in my opinion, has been forgotten."


We understand that many skaters did not like the introduction of the short dance. Some of them told us how difficult it is to build in the compulsory dance with the rest of the program without losing flow. What do you think about it?
"I can't say I'm totally “against” the Short Dance. I think it's right to have a Short and a Free Program and it's difficult to come up with different solutions, a wide approval by the skating community is required and the path that led to this short dance was already hard enough. As all the new things, I think we can make it better. I'll repeat myself by saying that I would like to see skaters interpret more the character of the dance, as we used to do with the compulsory dances and the original dance; then we had the freedom to embrace other themes in the free dance. With the compulsory dances, it was important to perform the steps perfectly but at the same time portray the spirit of the dance, showing that we were dancing a waltz rather than a tango. I think we are losing part of this ability in ice dance."


Susanna Rahkamo is the president of the Finnish figure skating federation and was recently elected as vice president of the Finnish Olympic committee. How do you feel about working with her?
"I am very fond of Susanna and we are bound by a big friendship. Her last European Championships (with Kokko) in 1995 have been the first one for Barbara and I, so we can say they kind of “adopted” us and I was very happy about it. I looked up to them as heroes ever since a while already, so meeting them and becoming friends with them was special. She's the one who asked me to go to Finland, she connected me with Kaisa Nieminen in the first place and she offered me this ice dance project. It is very important for me to work with the president of the federation who comes from my same discipline. We don't agree all the time but we both know what our goals are and we know how to get to them: it is a very proficient collaboration and this is also why I like working with her. The Finnish skating federation is efficiently small, there are a few people working in it and they all come from the ice sports, it is a federation close to the athletes and their needs. Finland is a small country after all and when we have any request we can make them directly to the Olympic committee so that we have a direct connection and a fast decision-making process."


Rahkamo herself mentioned that she would like to make Finlandia Trophy more and more important, some say it could become a Grand Prix event sometime in the future.
"Yes, there is a bigger plan concerning Finlandia Trophy. First of all they have a contract with the Barona Areena for 4 years. The arena is also endorsing the national figure skating team so they have a secured venue, which is very important if you want to plan a Grand Prix. Clearly there are some very high expenses to cover so they are still looking for sponsorships, they already have some but they need more. The idea is definitely to turn it into a Grand Prix event sometime in the future, or maybe a Grand Prix event to be organized once every two years alternating to another event, maybe the French one."


We would like to know more about your future plans.
"As for now I am looking to Sochi as my priority goal: as we agreed at the beginning of this collaboration all the efforts made are towards the Olympic qualification. On the other hand, we have the project of ice dance at the junior levels; some teams are beginning to rise. We had a basic novice team on an international podium in Riga recently, which is a small but important goal for us. This kind of work is a longer one, but maybe more important and more difficult. I hope to help younger Finnish coaches getting familiar with ice dance so that they'd consider this sport as a real career opportunity, possibly my making young athletes begin ice dance already by the age of 8 or 10. This is the right time for a skater to begin this sport, a time during which one can learn the basics very well and keep them for the rest of its life. The senior ice dancers I am working with right now began ice dancing only at about 18 years of age, so it is much more complicated for them. This kind of project succeeds only over the long haul, it will be fully developed in about 20 years, therefore you need time to see the benefits of it. Right now I'm not really questioning myself about how long I am staying there. The Olympic committee is open to arrangements but we will talk about that after Sochi, I believe."


We know that you have projects outside Finland as well, though..
"Of course. My cooperation with Marina Zueva is one of the best things that could have happened to me. Right now there's harmony between the finnish federation, the american and the canadian one which makes things easier so as long as it is possible, we will continue this way."