VANCOUVER –
This weekend we want to give you an inside pass to our Grand Prix Final journey in Vancouver, so we're doing a daily blog here on the Fan Zone. We hope you enjoy the insight, and always appreciate your support! –Madi and Zach
MADI: It's been five really intense weeks. After
Skate America and Skate Canada International, we wanted both of our programs to have more dramatic appeal, and variation from the slow parts into the fast parts, more… texture I'll call it. Our free is still
Romeo and Juliet, but we wanted some more of that classic drama. We felt like it was a very subtle performance before, so we swapped out the first part of the music for something people are familiar with, and, with that, we had to change a lot of the elements. Physically it comes across as a much different program.
We also changed the rhythm dance. We wanted something a little bit punchier at the end. We wanted to give the audience that moment to stand up on its feet and applaud. We want people to love it. We performed it yesterday in practice and it has a more dramatic tango finish that we had been wanting.
ZACH: We look at this season as the start of something new for us. And now even more so with these program changes. It's not a continuation, it's not the year after the Games,
it's the start of a new era. We were OK with going back to the drawing board and saying, "Who are we as a team?" "What do we want these next years to be like in competition?" And, with that, "What can we push ourselves to find out about who we are on and off the ice?" It's made us realize that we're in that discovery phase of our evolution. Yes, we want to be champions year-round, but as much as we want to win, it's not the focus. We're pushing ourselves to be the best that we can be. That goes way beyond figure skating.
We sat down with our team after
Skate Canada and – yes, we were happy – but we knew that we wanted to make changes. It was like, "Boom! Let's get to work." It all came together once we started to make those changes
MADI: Honestly, it was a lot. We upped our training by 30 percent. We wanted to work on our lifts so we started doing those off-ice, as well. It's been four weeks of exhaustion. We're tired! But for us, competition is always a fun time: It feels like a celebration of making it through all of what we just did healthily. And it's a rest for our bodies in a way, too. We want to show the work that we're putting in.
ZACH: I think it's easy to get caught up in, "It's new, it's new, it's new!" But in a way, we get to think of this as a whole new
season for us, starting at this competition. It will be nice to see where we can take this experience, having already competed in the Grand Prix this season. We have that comfort and confidence in ourselves as a team, and we don't want to take any "expectations" from the old program on the ice with us. We just get to experience them anew.
MADI: Up until three days ago, we were still making changes to the free dance. Our poor music guy is on version 19 at this point!
[Both laugh.] That's how it ended up. Our coaches have always said, "If you're willing to step up to the plate and show us you can work for it, that's the champion mentality we want." It's been a really good learning experience for both of us.
ZACH: Can I just say: Madi is a rock. My energy and emotions can bounce all over the place from nervous to calm and I can consistently rely on her. All I need in a competition weekend are my skates and my partner. Then I'm good to go.
MADI: [Smiling.] My favorite thing about Zach is going to competitions and being on practice ice with him and he's always willing to be goofy when I need it. We take our responsibility seriously, but, for example, today as we're about to bow, Zach tells me this off-hand joke and makes me laugh. I really appreciate that.
It's a really cool Final this year. We are the only ones out of the senior dance field that have been to the Final before, but we still haven't won a medal. So, for any of us it would be a first medal and certainly a first title here. We knew coming in here that we couldn't just show up and do OK and be on the podium. That's what inspired the changes that we made.
Our goal? Gold is our goal. That's what we're trying to bring home for Team USA.
