Hi friends. My skating life has been erratic lately and I’m off the ice for another 3 1/2 weeks. But during the last few months I did manage to work a little with Oleg Altukhov, otherwise known online as Ice Dancer Oleg. Oleg is a long-term competitor at Senior Nationals and has posted many educational skating videos on YouTube and now on his own channel.
I was already a Patreon supporter of Oleg’s when I met him IRL last spring during a test session at my rink. His new ice dance partner Niki was testing her senior moves in order to be able to compete in USFSA at the senior level. She was already a high-level skater, I’m sure it was no trouble at all for her to pass those moves.
Niki and Oleg trained all season in Vancouver B.C. and Oleg taught in Bellingham, WA. I realized belatedly that he was coming to my area once a week to teach and got in three lessons.
You all know how rare it is to find a good ice dance man to work with and how much I’ve missed Ty. I haven’t worked much on my dances in the last year and a half. Oleg helped me brush up my fourteenstep and we worked on getting some actual power from power pulls.
I caught some of Nationals on NBCSportsGold and saw Niki and Oleg in the ice dance, they looked like they were enjoying themselves. Now Niki is retiring from competition to concentrate on school and coaching and Oleg is moving back to the East Coast to work with his old partner Ashley Bain. We will miss him in the Northwest, but I’m glad we connected while he was here.
Related Posts:
Six days to my Juvenile Moves test Final preparation for my juvenile moves test.- Juvenile Moves Test: Retry My re-try juvenile moves test.
Ten Fox Bronze Ice Dance Test Testing my last bronze dance, the Ten Fox.
Skating the Fiesta Tango Passing the third and last pre-bronze ice dance, the Fiesta Tango.
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So cool that you got to work with Oleg. Hope you are able to make more consistent trips back to the rink soon. I sure miss hearing about your skating adventures!
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Thanks Eva, it’s nice to know you are still interested in this little blog. I can’t wait to get back to my skating!
Mary, love hearing from you. I have not been following Oleg as much lately, so it was extra-nice to hear about his season and see the videos. He seems like he would be an excellent teacher in person as well as on video, and I’m excited to hear about your lessons. I hope the time off ice is not too hard–life does intrude, doesn’t it!
It does! But I’m making plans for when I’m back.
This is a hard sequence to keep moving without loss of speed and when learning this there’s a tendency to get a stuck feeling after the edge change before the double threes (thus hard to get the double threes around after the edge change).