Team Ireland’s Elizabeth Golding produced a season best in the junior women’s figure skating short programme at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Vuokatti, Finland today. The 17-year-old is the first Irish figure skater to represent Ireland in an Olympic event, and finished with 32.41 in the event which will finish later this evening. The EYOF runs from the 20-25 March 2022.
Speaking after her competition Dubai based Golding was pleased to land her first combination setting her up for a season best performance,
“I loved it, I was really excited when I looked up and saw all the people watching and clapping and cheering it was just like really like a like an ego booster maybe. No I really enjoyed it even though I made snakes on the flying camel spin which I never usually do, I’ll just take is as a life lesson and move forward with it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“The first combination that Triple Salchow Double Toeloop, I’ve been having problems with it for a few months now, and I couldn’t do it when I put my music on. But thank God this time I did it and I did it in the most important place.”
In Alpine Skiing Charlotte Turner missed qualification for the finals in the Parallel slalom today by 1.50 seconds. Three Irish Alpine Skiers contested the exciting short race where athletes competed side by side with each other. The top thirty finishers move to the finals which take place next Friday, with Turner finishing in 40th place overall. Teammates Megan Ryan and Kailey Murphy were 45th and 53rd respectively in their final event of the Games.
This was the first time that these athletes competed in this type of event with Ryan saying,
“I’ve never skied anything like this before, so it’s pretty fun. It’s like they used giant slalom gates where they put them at the distance of a slalom course so it’s really fast and really quick. Both athletes start at the same time so it’s like you’re duelling someone and hope you beat them down. It was a lot of fun and I’ve never done anything like it.”
Turner added,
“We haven’t done Parallel slalom before so it was like a new mindset and just being open to the experience and not really thinking about results. Giorgio our coach gave great advice to try to ignore the person next to you as much as you can, so that was my goal and luckily I didn’t see her through the course so I just focused on myself.
“In my second run I came pretty close to not finishing I had some trouble in the last few gates but I was able to save it. It is a really difficult balance between control and risk but that’s what makes it fun and makes the sport competitive.”
Murphy relished the atmosphere and opportunity to be paired against teammate Ryan,
“It was super fun and so cool to have Megan right there and it was great cheering on Charlotte at the start. I’ve never skied much like that, it was really cool. All the kids at the finish, it was really cute, you come through the finish and have a million high fives.”
