Spain has two world class Ice Dance couples in Olivia Smart/Adrian Diaz and Sara Hurtado/Kirill Khaliavin, but only one spot for the Olympic Winter Games in February and the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in March. Hurtado/Khaliavin finished 11th at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2021 and would have needed to have placed 10th at least in order to give Spain the chance to earn a second spot at the Olympic qualifying competition last September.
Four years ago, the Spanish Ice Dance couples found themselves in a similar situation – they were competing for one Olympic spot. Hurtado/Khaliavin got it and came a respectable 12th in Pyeongchang. The Spanish Federation decided for this Olympic season that three competitions in which both teams compete will count towards the qualification for Beijing: The ISU Challenger Finlandia Trophy in October, the Spanish National Championships in December and the upcoming ISU European Figure Skating Championships. Smart/Diaz edged Hurtado/Khaliavin at Finlandia Trophy by just 0.25 points, but won Nationals clearly with eight points to spare and are currently leading in the race.
__ISU%20Grand%20Prix%20of%20Figure%20Skating%20Tokyo__2021__@International%20Skating%20Union__1352805985.webp)
Sara Hurtado and Kirill Khaliavin (ESP) compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the 2021 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating in Tokyo, Japan © International Skating Union (ISU)
There is a lot of pressure, but Smart/Diaz try to remain calm. “We take one thing at a time to be honest. We had the pressure and nerves before Finland, but we put it a bit aside for the two Grand Prixs or for the Challenger (event in Austria),” Diaz said. “I just think that we're going to stay focused on what we are doing on the ice every day at home in Montreal in training. We trust the process. The biggest difference from four years ago is that every day we show up at the rink, we've been more precise, consistent and just taking care of each other, of our bodies, the way we're training. I think that makes the difference and it shows in the programs when we are skating. We knew it was going to be a tight fight, but we have a great team behind us, helping us, taking care of us. We can't let them down,” he continued.
__ISU%20Grand%20Prix%20Canada%202021__%C2%A9International%20Skatin%20Union__1350341837.webp)
Olivia Smart and Adrian Diaz (ESP) skate in the Ice Dance Free Dance during the 2021 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating in Vancouver, Canada © International Skating Union (ISU)
“We're putting in absolutely everything we can every day in training and in treatments. I don't think either of us has gotten so many treatment appointments during a week before, but we're giving everything this season, we know we want to take the spot for the Olympics and Worlds,” Smart noted. “We want it more than ever. We missed it four years ago by point something. It hurt a lot. We're even hungrier this season.”
At the ISU Grand Prix event Skate Canada International earlier this season, Smart/Diaz claimed their first Grand Prix medal, the bronze. “We've had a few seasons of Grand Prix now and I think in about four Grand Prixs we've always ended fourth and this season we really knew that we could go in and get a medal,” Olivia pointed out. “I think it showed at Skate America that we also could have taken a medal then, so it's started to become more and more real and we're up there with big dogs. We're not here to play anymore, so we're honored to have our talent and hard work be acknowledged and people do enjoy it as much as we do now. Seeing so many people backing us up in the comments from everybody around the world has been incredible.”
The Skaters feel that they have become more consistent in practice and in competition. “We went out in these two Grand Prixs full confidence and we gave a 150 percent in all programs as in these competitions we have nothing to lose. We only had something to gain. We used these two Grand Prixs as leverage for our programs, to really push them out to our limits and gain confidence on them so we can use that for the next and bigger competitions throughout the end of the season,” she explained.
With their “The Mask of Zorro” Free Dance, Smart/Diaz have found the perfect vehicle to highlight their strengths. But the choice was not as easy as it might look like. “We were having a really hard time finding free dance music,” Olivia admitted. “We've done everything from a love story to a sad clown, to bluesy. So we listened to music for months and we were getting a little angry.” One of their friends and trainers more or less jokingly suggested they should skate to “The Mask of Zorro” as it is a Spanish theme. “We've heard it before, I loved the music, it's been done in figure skating, but it's been a while since it has been done in dance and we had an idea that we could do it in a different way,” Smart said. “We know one of our biggest strength is playing characters. It's an Olympic season, go with your strengths, so that's what we did. We went with the two movie characters, very forward understanding for the public and the judges and easy to portray for us. So we've been pushing that and the choreography was by Romain (Haguenauer) and the music cuts were by Romain also. It has a good mix of emotional love story, power, passion. It's our personality in a program I feel,” she continued.
“Romain had a vision and he suggested which part of the music to use and we fully trusted him,” Adrian shared. “The thing is with that soundtrack, there are so many options. We couldn't decide which one to put first and how long to use one of other ones. We trust him and it went well. We never did any Flamenco, Paso Doble together. So we didn't know how it would develop. The whole process was fun,” he noted.
While Smart/Diaz are based in Montréal, Canada and train in the Ice Academy founded by Marie-France Dubreuil and her husband and skating partner Patrice Lauzon, their rivals train in Moscow under Alexander Zhulin. Hurtado/Khaliavin were the first Spanish Ice Dancers to win a medals in the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating with a silver and a bronze in 2018 and 2019. They did not choose a Spanish theme in the Olympic season and picked “Stairway to Heaven” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You” by Led Zeppelin for their Free Dance as they had explored the Flamenco before.
Both teams now are getting ready for the showdown at the ISU European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn, Estonia in mid-January that will bring the final decision of who is going to represent Spain at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. Following the success in Single Skating with two-time ISU World Champion and 2018 Olympic bronze medalist Javier Fernandez, Spain is now doing well in the pair disciplines with Hurtado/Khaliavin and Smart/Diaz in Ice Dance and with Pair Skaters Laura Barquero/Marco Zandron who became the first to qualify an Olympic spot for the country in this discipline.
