Victor Kraatz Arena in Parksville, named in honour of the skater who, with partner Shae-Lynn Bourne, became the first North Americans to win the world title in ice dance, is a standing testament to the Island’s connection to the event.
Kraatz spent his formative years skating at the old Parksville rink and Oak Bay Rec Centre en route to fourth-place showings at the 1998 Nagano and 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
That’s a heady legacy to be following, but it seems to have spawned at least a mini-wave of aspiring ice dancers coming out of the Racquet Club of Victoria. Andie Lynn Gingrich and Liam Kinrade have qualified for the 2013 Canadian championships that began this weekend in Mississauga, Ont., and Pilar and Leonardo Maekawa will skate in the prestigious Four Continents from Feb. 6-11 in Osaka, Japan.
“The connection between the two skaters draws fans in and engages them,” said Gingrich, of ice dance, an event which took on epic profile in Canadian sport with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir striking for a memorably commanding gold-medal performance forthe host nation at the2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
This is serious stuff at this level.
Gingrich, a Grade 11 Mount Douglas Secondary student, is from Calgary but relocated to the Island about two years ago after a national search for a high-level partner yielded Mill Bay’s Kinrade, a Grade 12 student at Frances Kelsey.
The two hit it off immediately and a team, currently in the Novice category, was born.
“Our goal is to skate clean, like we have done in training, and place in the top five [in Novice] at the national championships,” said Kinrade.
The Novice ice dance at the national championships, for which Kinrade and Gingrich qualified through the Skate Canada Challenge last month in Regina, is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Mississauga.
The brother and sister Maekawa tandem — Leonardo is 20 and Pilar 18 — were home schooled in Sooke so their education could fit around their training schedule.
They are now emerging on the world stage, having qualified last month through the Golden Spin at Zagreb, Croatia, for the upcoming Four Continents.
Canadians of Japanese and Mexican ancestry, the Maekawas were born in Mexico City and raised in Victoria with interesting options internationally.
They have declared to compete for Mexico. The move is shrewdly strategic since Canada and Japan are figure-skating powers and there is a much better chance of making the world championships and Winter Olympics skating for Mexico, which is not exactly known as a winter-sport nation.
“At Zagreb, we were skating against Olympians and that was a neat experience. And it will only get more intense at the Four Continents in Osaka,” said Leonardo, whose parents Dimitri and Conchita Maekawa, enrolled him and his sister in skating at a young age after arriving in Greater Victoria because they wanted to acclimatize them to Canadian ways.
“At that level, against competition like that, we are learning how to control our emotions and keep our physical and mental composure. We just try to picture ourselves as if we are skating at home in the Racquet Club with nobody watching.”
Both the Maekawa and Kinrade-Gingrich teams are coached by Matt Willis, junior development co-ordinator for Racquet Club.
“I’ve been embraced so completely by this club,” said Gingrich.
“There are no rivalries and no dramas. It’s like a second family.”
