Dave Paul Michael Marinaro had mixed feelings following his bronze medal pairs performance at the national figure skating championships in Ottawa.
Dave Paul
Michael Marinaro had mixed feelings following his bronze medal pairs performance at the national figure skating championships in Ottawa.
“Overall, being our first major competition of the season, we were happy with how we skated,” said the 25-year-old Sarnian in a phone interview from Montreal, where he now lives and trains with partner Kirsten Moore-Towers.
“We really weren’t sure how we would do. It’s been a tough season so far and we were very happy to get out there and skate.”
The duo got a late start to the competitive season after Moore-Towers suffered a concussion that kept her off the ice for three months.
And while a top-3 finish at nationals was a significant achievement, it wasn’t enough to propel them to the World Championships in Helsinki, March 29 to April 2.
They will, instead, travel with the rest of the national team to South Korea to compete at the ISU Four Continents championships, Feb. 14-19.
It’s was a bit of a disappointment, Marinaro said, after he and Moore-Towers were dropped in favour of the team of Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau for the world championships.
Seguin, like Moore-Towers, has been dealing with concussion issues so the pair did not skate at last weekend’s Canadian championships.
It was expected that Seguin and Bilodeau would be granted a spot for the Worlds, so Marinaro said he and Moore-Towers were really shooting for a top-2 finish in Ottawa.
“We wanted that second spot,” said Marinaro. “We knew we’d be in a good position if we finished second. But we fell short by about 10 points (behind the team of Lubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch.).
Marinaro and Moore-Towers’ training partners in Montreal, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford won the event.
“We actually weren’t sure how Skate Canada was going to handle it,” he said. “We thought they might wait until after the Four Continents to name the three pairs teams for the World Championships.
“But that’s not what they chose to do,” he added. “It is what it is. That’s the sport. Now we just have to work hard and prepare for (the Four Continents meet).”
Because they haven’t yet skated internationally this year, Marinaro said it will be important “for us just to get a score. We have to get ranked, internationally, to get on the Grand Prix circuit.”
The Four Continents competition is being held at the site of the 2018 Winter Olympic skating venue. Marinaro said he and Moore-Towers still hope to return there to compete on the big stage next year.
Canada will likely send three pairs teams to the 2018 Olympics.
“We are definitely clear underdogs, but we’re going to use that as motivation for the next 12 or 13 months. It’s still within our grasp,” he said.
