Magazine

Team Paradise: "The last Worlds were just a small step back to become stronger than ever"


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During the last Worlds, the Team Paradise, who was leading the competition, did several errors during the free program and finished in 3rd place. / Credits: Team Paradise

The new season is a new page in the synchronized skating history! These last weeks, we have introduced you, two teams from Russia. Now it’s time to represent the strongest team, twice World Champions, winners and prize winners of many international competitions: Team Paradise.

To begin, let’s speak about your summer time. Did you change something in your preparation?
Team Paradise (RUS): We didn't change anything in our work. At the end of the spring, we've chosen some new skaters for the team. In June, as usual, we had a holiday and then we started our practices in July in our home ice rink. August was fully devoted to our annual summer camp in Yoshkar-Ola.

What is new in your team?
This year, we have 5 new skaters in the team. They came from different teams.

Paradise is a national team, so how many cities are represented now?
Let me think… Every year we have more and more skaters who came from other cities. This season we have 3 skaters from Ekaterinburg (Junost), 3 girls from Kazan (Tatarstan and Idel), 3 skaters from Moscow (Crystal Ice), 1 from Samara and rest of our team are skaters from St. Petersburg ( Sunrise-1).

So many cities!
Yes. And you have to remember that Russia is the biggest country in the world and these cities aren’t close to St-Petersburg! For example, the distance between our city and Ekaterinburg is 1780 km. When a girl decides to do tests in our team, it means that she strongly wants to be part of our team. And if she successfully passes the tests, she has to leave her family, study, friends and move to another city where she doesn’t know nobody and nothing. It is difficult for the skaters but they know what they want and follow their dream.



So, could you open the secret... what is the idea of your short program?
The girls will show that when we follow our dream, sometimes you have to look back to move on. It's only through suffering and love that we are able to rise up to a new height.

What are the biggest difficulties in new programs?
Good question… I think that the biggest difficulty is to make a good composition. We want to reunite the sport with the art. The skaters have to be as one organism, as one whole.

Which goals do you have for this season?
Those last 3 seasons, Team Paradise showed a very high level in every competition and we won quite everything. But at the last World Championships, we had a sudden mistake and we lost our position. This year, we will continue to show our strengths and fight for the World title. We want to prove that the last Worlds were just a small step back to become stronger than ever.

Team Paradise will compete for the first time of the season on Saturday evening in Finland at the 2018 Finlandia Trophy.

Results - TOP 3

Finlandia Trophy 2018
Espoo (FIN)
OCT 05, 2018 - OCT 07, 2018

Senior
TEAM Score
1Marigold IceUnity (FIN)80.76
2Team Paradise (RUS)79.27
3Team Unique (FIN)73.64