A skating video,  only this time it’s Molly who is skating.

She did her first competition this morning at Whitley Bay,   and I think she did a really lovely job.  I am sure you will agree with me.

She was competing in the Beginners Under 12s,   and was the youngest by quite a way,  so she was a little disappointed with her result,   but I thought she was brilliant.

We have been over to Dumfries today,  so Katie could compete at the Scottish.  It was a good day with a very high standard.  Katie had a really nice skate,   and we think she came in about 8th.    We had a long drive back,  so we didn’t wait around for the official results.

I’d love to share a video of her skate with you, but while Phil followed her round the rink with the camera, unfortunately he forgot to press record…

I do have a couple of lovely still shots though. The first is just as she starts, and then later her pickup spiral which isn’t the most elegant of positions but she really liked the photo, so obviously we had to buy it!

She skated really nicely, and came 4th out of 10 which was quite respectable.

Katie has been working on her axel for a very long time. She landed it just before Christmas and then it hasn’t been seen again for some time, but here is the evidence that she can do it. She just has to do 1 1/2 rotations in the air,  starting forwards and landing backwards on one foot,  so not too tricky then!!!!

Katie and I have been to Telford for the past 2 days. She was skating in the Telford Open along with a number of her friends from our local rink. Most of her friends skated on Wednesday and they all did really well, they took a number of firsts, a second and some third places, so as I commented to Katie, “No Pressure then”.

Katie has been to a few open competitions now, and she normally places somewhere in the middle of the group, with anything above the midpoint being considered a pretty good result. So after the brilliant results of her friends on Wednesday, I was more than a little nervous for her on Thursday. She was, of course, cool as a cucumber!

Well, I don’t know why I was nervous – she was brilliant!!! She had the best skate I’ve ever seen her do, everything was spot on, and even her coach couldn’t come up with a suggestion (although I’m sure he’ll have thought of something by Sunday morning practice!). When her scores came in I was stunned, Figure Skating scoring is very bizarre (certainly in the lower levels, the scoring they use in international competitions is now different) so we really had no idea where she would place, but I had a good feeling she would be on the rostrum.

Katie wasn’t bothered, she went off with her friends for some chips, but I was pacing the floor in the area where the results get posted and once they were finally up I was thrilled to see she’d come 2nd. What a great result!!

I’d love to show you the video of her skate, but my heart was pounding and I could hardly breathe, so I didn’t actually manage to video her. I do have a nice clip of the wrong girl warming up! I spotted a girl in a blue jacket warming up and videoed her for a few minutes before I realised Katie was at the other end of the rink… Cool and Calm I was not!

the only minor downside to the trip was the traffic coming home.

Katie at the quarterlies on Sunday, skating to her new program Doop.