SKATING November 2018: Health First for Tarah Kayne and Danny O'Shea

Tarah Kayne and Danny O'Shea have been through a lot.

In 2014, Kayne suffered a hip injury, subsequently followed by a knee injury just over a year and a half later. Each time, the 2016 U.S. champions spent summers apart as Kayne spent time at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and O'Shea continued skating at their former training base, Ellenton, Florida.

"People who don't know figure skating are like, 'Oh, did you work with your backup partner in that time period?' and it's such a funny question to people who know figure skating," O'Shea said. "If you watch the NFL, if one person's injured, the next one's in, but for us, there wasn't ever a time where we didn't know that we were right for each other once we started skating together."

Instead, O'Shea asked himself, "Alright, how long do I have to wait and what can we do to make ourselves better when we're dealing with that situation?"
 

The waiting has finally come to an end. Following the 2017-18 season of ups and downs coming back from knee surgery in February 2017, Kayne and O'Shea are ready for the next chapter of their career together in Colorado Springs, now training under Dalilah Sappenfield.

"My health was a huge deciding factor of our move. We really needed to find a way, if we were planning on continuing to skate, that I stay uninjured because these last few years, we haven't been able to have consistent training and that's been one of our biggest limiting factors," Kayne said. The pair was previously coached by Jim Peterson and Amanda Evora in Florida.

Kayne continued, "Because of that, we haven't been able to create much momentum for our competition season, so we needed to figure out a way to stay healthy and that answer for us was to be in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center."

Being full-time OTC residents means having access to important resources and experts year-round, instead of just during one-off visits throughout a season. This care, Kayne said, will not only help them continue to monitor her knee, but also avoid future injuries.

"[The physical therapists] know a lot about figure skating, which is huge, because they can really help guide us on whether we're pushing too hard too fast and they can help if we do have any pain or minor setbacks," Kayne said. "We also really appreciate the strength and conditioning at the OTC to help me get back to full strength and that'll help prevent injury as well."

With health as their main priority, Kayne and O'Shea are more than ready to take on this season from a new training location.

"I think that by taking our time, we did it correctly coming back into training this season," O'Shea said. "And it's great to have Tarah not be in pain while she's training right now for the first time in quite a long time."

Now on the other side of a difficult few years, Kayne is grateful to be on the ice: "I really feel like everything just seems a little bit easier because we've had so many hardships."

Read the team's cover story in the November issue of SKATING magazine.