Since pairing up in May 2016,
Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc have prided themselves on having a partnership of equals.
"That's how we treat each other, like equals," Cain says. "And that's how we want to be seen."
Decisions are made together, with input from coaches Darlene and Peter Cain, who are also Ashley's parents. Judging by the skaters' easy camaraderie, the four-vote democracy works well for everyone – most of the time.
"His short program pants, that was the biggest battle of them all," Cain says.
"I'm wearing pin-striped pants," a glum LeDuc says. "It was an artistic choice by the majority of people in our group … I'm very happy to be wearing them."
"Even if you don't love them, you look great in them," Cain adds. "That's all that matters."
Cain and LeDuc's programs were choreographed by Pasquale Camerlengo, and both – a short to "Bella Belle" by Electric Swing Circus and free skate to the
W.E. soundtrack – have hints of romance in the music. That's not what they're about though.
"We've never been a romantic couple on the ice, but we wanted that sense of romance of two people going on a journey," LeDuc says. "(The free skate) is more about two pillars of strength coming together, two pillars of equality."
"We're debuting a new long program costume here," Cain says. Â "We made the long program (costume) into a unitard; it was a skirt the last two competitions. We wanted it to be a unitard, so we both look like statues out there and we look like equals."
Skate America is already the third international competition this season for the Texas-based pair. They brought home gold medals from the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic and Ondrej Nepela Trophy, but here in Everett, Washington is where they really hope to push things into high gear.
"We just didn't do our job," LeDuc says of the pair's first two outings, where they lost points on elements including the pair combination spin, death spiral and a few lifts.
"We didn't get our levels, any of them, at U.S. Classic and Nepela," Cain says. "That is what we are looking to build. Even at (Nepela) we got those scores without having most of our levels, so we're really looking to gain a lot of points here."
Both skaters think 2018-19 could be their breakthrough season. After placing third and fourth in the U.S. the past two seasons, they're taking aim at a U.S. title and a trip to the World Championships.
"We've been told so many times, 'When you finally put it all together, you guys have it,'" Cain said. "We want this to be that building season. There are a lot of retirements, lots of teams taking the Grand Prix season off. This is the time to build points and make a name for ourselves."
They got a vote of confidence from Nina Mozer, who coaches European pair champions Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov of Russia, the top-ranked pair competing here in Everett. Cain and LeDuc spent three weeks last summer training with Mozer's group in Sochi, Russia. Mozer – along with co-coach Maxim Trankov – spent the week before Skate America training Tarasova and Morozov alongside Cain and LeDuc in their Euless, Texas rink.
"(Mozer) was like, 'Now, everything is a pair, everything is an element,'" Cain says. "We said, 'Yes, you taught us last year and it took a year.' It was really good seeing how they train coming into a competition. It was a nice push to get us ready."
