Nicole Schott left the ice with a smile. She actually made another leap in performance at the Olympics – and that at the age of 25. In her short program she ran Ástor Piazzolla’s tango without any mistakes, jumping a triple flip with a triple toe loop in combination, a triple Rittberger and a double axel. And because she has an expressive style and presents her air numbers in a harmonious choreography, she earned 63.13 points for the performance in the individual competition: the highest value of this year’s season.
That placed her in 14th place at the halfway point in the competition, in good company with former US champion Karen Chen and Japan’s rising talent Mana Kawabe, placing her among the world’s elite. But the six-time German champion was even more pleased that she had mastered the most difficult short program of her career, even twice at the Olympics, first in the team competition and now as a soloist: she feels “in the best shape of my life”.
Schott pays a little tribute to old age
For two and a half weeks she has been training with the best on the ice every day and has benefited from the exchange and direct comparison. The time in Beijing, she says, gave her self-confidence and confidence; and that’s why she can enjoy these Winter Games, her second, more than the premiere in Pyeongchang.
And so she paid a little tribute to her age, which in her case is of course relative. But in their industry, it is the skid children who are setting standards. “Anyone who is at the same level at 15 has to work very differently in the years before than I did then,” said Nicole Schott. She was able to take it easy on her body, which was a career-prolonging measure. Many of her colleagues, she said, would therefore advocate raising the minimum age for women. Of the thirty figure skaters who took to the ice in Beijing on Tuesday, only six athletes have actually experienced Pyeongchang.