World Ice-Skating Championships, Turin 2010
The Winter Olympics is the same for me every four years - just when it starts to get going and I make time to watch it, it’s all over. Then there’s the disappointment that it’s finished and by the time it’s come around again I will have forgotten how much I enjoyed it the last time and then left it too late again..
So, when driving through Turin in February, just after the Winter Olympics in Canada, and spotting a sign advertising the World Figure Skating Championships in March, it seemed all too good to be true. Getting tickets was easy and cheap. €10 each for an experience of a lifetime!
Gold Medallist, Yu Na Kim had blown us away at the Winter Olympics in Canada so what a perfect idea to go see the first day of the women’s competition.
The venue is wonderful. It was originally built as..., then later it was used as an aircraft museum (Turin has a history of plane manufacturing as well as cars), then as a sports hall - just one big open space with a decaying roof. A roof famous in UK cinema, the one driven over by three cheeky Minis, avoiding the dumb Italian police, in the 1969 Michael Caine classic, The Italian Job. I’m happy to say they repaired the roof, destroyed the building underneath and re-built a very nice ice-skating venue. Michael Caine could still take a diversion over it if he saw the need.
It was going to be a long day so it was a perfect excuse to pack a bag with junk food. The show started by 9am. The queues outside were huge, mostly school children, so we displayed our Italian learned skills in pushing to the front. It’s just a matter of confidence and looking like you have some kind of authority, that you shouldn’t dare be challenged.
Once inside the pristine building (it was restored for the 2006 Winter Turin Olympics) you can’t help feeling impressed. I was expecting to be two and half miles from the action, straining to see if it was an ice-skater or a bloke smoothing the ice. We got seats right on the edge, the view was great and some of the competitors came to sit beside us when they had done their best on the ice.
The show started with the lesser skaters, which were all great to us, then they just got better and better. They showed themselves to be far superior sports people than say, footballers or F1 drivers, as even if they fell (which they often did) they got back up and carried on, admitting frustration only when their routine was over. Too many sports people throw their toys from their prams when things don’t seem to go their way - it shows perhaps they don’t appreciate their position and that it’s all taken far too seriously.
By 4,30pm the serious contenders displayed their unreal movements, power and grace. They spun our heads and left us gawping, wishing it wasn’t going to end. It was a display of magnificence I can’t believe is present in many other sports. Footballers are mostly morons that fight, cheat and leave the crowds short-changed and disappointed (why can’t English footballers play like the Brazilians? Too lazy? Paid so much anyway they don’t care?). And in Formula One it seems the point has now been firmly proven that it’s all about the cars. And other sports, I can’t even be bothered to mention.
The day did come to an end, and it was disappointing it was over. But I was glad the chance came our way and that we seized the opportunity. Turin hosts some great events and it always does them well. Be sure to keep a look out for upcoming great occasions and I hope they are even half as good as the Women’s World Figure-Skating Championships.
