For a second year, the ISU Development Commission supported the Olympic Development Project 2018-2021 (ODP) for Single Skating and Ice Dance Skaters and Coaches that ran from May 20-25, 2019.
The seminar is held annually at the Sport Institute of Finland, Vierumäki, which is a national coaching and training center for sports and physical education. The seminar was hosted by the Finnish Figure Skating Association.
This year the seminar gathered a total of 113 participants: 7 Ice Dance Coaches, 12 Ice Dance Couples, 54 Single Skating Coaches and 28 Single Skaters. The seminar moderators were Ms. Kori Ade, Ms. Elena Buiyanova, Mr. Igor Shpilband, Mr. Maurizio Margaglio and Mr. Robbie Kaine.
The purposes of the ODP were:
- Understanding and recognizing the current sport-specific requirements of Olympic level Figure Skating.
- Initiating a new development collaboration between Single Skating and Ice Dance.
- Discovering the next generation of Coaches and strengthening their competencies towards the next Olympic Games and securing the transfer of knowledge from the current generation of Coaches to the next generation.
- Enabling a long-term, high-quality development process for Skaters in co-operation with their personal Coaches, with the aim of elevating the skaters to the Olympic level and raising Ice Dance Couples from more countries to the international level.
- Identifying the areas that Coaches should focus on in order to help individual Skaters to successfully carry out the transition from the Junior to Senior international competitive level.
- Encouraging an open dialogue among different nations and continents and utilizing and increasing co-operation between various stakeholders.
- Supporting national projects in Europe, aiming at Olympic participation in 2022.