You can purchase our new book “Soulmates on Ice” online from our publisher Latitude46 Publishing and on Amazon. It is also available at your local Chapters or Indigo bookstore!
When I was a child, as you may know by now, I was obsessed with figure skating. I studied skating by watching VHS tapes, reading online and reading books. I used to lay in bed at night and read my mom a variety of skating books. I would ask her, “What are you going to say about me when they interview you” and she would laugh and tell me that’s silly, no one is ever going to interview her. Little did she know, that at 10 years old, I already had a plan. I was going to go to the Olympics, and I was going to do things no one in the World had ever done before. And I was going to write about my journey in a book of my own.
23 years later, that’s exactly what I did. Because if you don’t know by now, when I set my mind to something, nothing will stop me from achieving my goals.
This past week, my story was officially released with the help of a local writer from my hometown, Laura Young. Laura approached me in the summer of 2017, asking how I felt about the possibility of sharing my journey. She had written about me for the local newspapers since I was a young child and she felt like it was time to take that leap and put everything into a book. Since my story is not complete without my skating partner, Eric Radford, he naturally joined the project as well.
The first time we met with Laura, she wanted to start with “The Perfect Skate”. What is the perfect skate? Have we ever had one? What did it smell like? What did it look like? How did it make us feel? Naturally, Eric and I were brought back to 2016, in Boston, at the World Championships. To Adele, and our favourite routine of Hometown Glory. We went over that competition with Laura for hours that day. In the end, I kept repeating to her, that it was simply magic and it all seemed so simple. We were more prepared then we’d ever been for a competition. We felt no pressure, because we felt like the underdogs entering the event. We kept our focus entirely on ourselves and we trusted each other and our plan.
When we chatted that September day in 2017 with Laura, we were training our Olympic free skate, set to music from Muse, and we had no idea how the Olympics would end. We’d hope our book would have a beautiful ending, but there was always a chance in sport that it wasn’t going to end so well.
Flash forward to post-Olympics: March 2018. And here Eric and I are chatting with Laura once again. Rehashing everything about the Olympics.
How did we withstand the pressure to preform 4 career best performances in one week? What were we thinking when the music started and our hearts were racing? What did we see? What did we smell? Well. Oddly enough. Our answers were almost the same as when we recalled that magical moment in Boston years prior. We felt prepared and focused. We didn’t feel pressure because we felt like we were the underdogs. We trusted each other and we trusted our plan. It was simple. It had felt so easy. And… the music playing during our Olympic freeskate was none other then Hometown Glory.
Of course, there is more to my career than that “Perfect Skate”. I haven’t had very many of those. But everything that happened before it, and in between those performances, has been written in detail throughout our book. Eric and I were very open with Laura and told her very honestly how we felt at key moments in our careers. We recalled times of sadness, including when I failed to make the 2010 Olympic Team after dealing with a terrible injury for months… pushing through, hoping the light at the end of that tunnel would be in Vancouver at the Olympic Games. Eric and I reminiscence about our awful try-out in 2010 and how we shrugged it off and figured we would be moving on with our lives… only for our coach, and my future husband, to persuade us to skate together. We talk about the lows of the 2016/2017 skating season, where we saw ourselves drop from World Champions to 7th place in the World in just one year. Sitting outside the podium, for the first time in 5 years.
My story is one of pure grit and determination. I had a dream and I made it happen the old fashion way, through relentless hard work.
Eric’s story is one of passion, heart, dedication and timing. He was one of the most talented pairs skaters in Canada, with no suitable partner for many years.
We formed an unlikely partnership in 2010, as we wanted to try one more time to qualify for the Olympic Games. We were each others last chance at this sport. Who could have ever imagined everything that was laying ahead?
To hear all about our journey, and see never before seen photos, you can find our book at these places:
- Latitude46 Publishing
- Amazon
- You can also find our book at your local Chapters or Indigo bookstore!
