Local figure skater Kobi Chant, 16, has brought home a bronze medal in figure skating from the Red Deer Canada Winter Games.
Chant competed with his partner Savanna Martel, 13, from Airdrie in the pre novice ice dance competition and says he felt good going into his competitions on Feb. 25 and 27.
“I felt pretty comfortable because we competed against everyone before,” said Chant. “So I kind of figured I knew where we were going to stack up.”
After competing on Feb. 25, Chant and Martel were leading in the competition with a score of 27.22 in the pattern dance.
On Feb. 27 during the free dance, they fell to third, but still earned a score of 49.89, which is something Chant is still proud to have achieved.
Their final score was 77.11.
“We did a lot better than I expected because of the level of competition; I figured the judging would be a lot harder than it was at previous competitions,” said Chant.
“Our scores on Monday were much better than I anticipated and even yesterday (Feb. 27) with the couple of mishaps we had, the score was phenomenal,” Chant said.
Chant says that the mishaps were nothing major but enough to let other competitors get ahead.
“It wasn’t clean. It was just a couple of stumbles in our step sequence, just a couple of little stumbles that allowed the two teams that were behind us to get past us,” Chant said.
The experience of competing in the Games differed from what he had encountered in previous competitions due to size of the audience.
“It was definitely a different experience. There were 10 times the people that I’ve ever experienced before,” said Chant. “(It) was different at first but it was almost settling as you knew that everyone was cheering for you and they’re from a town that you came from.”
The size of the audience wasn’t the only different aspect to the experience because as an athlete, Chant was staying in Red Deer, away from his family and home.
“It was actually a lot easier than I had expected at first. I definitely felt a lot of pressure looking after myself, because I didn’t have a parent there to help,” said Chant.
Chant said he’s thrilled with the experience and to have the honour to bring home the bronze medal to Olds.
“I am more than thrilled by my experience. It was quite amazing to be able to come and experience something of this level,” said Chant.” It was a very big once-in-a-lifetime thing — you’ll never experience something like this ever again.”
It meant a lot to Chant to have representatives from Olds and people he knows from Olds in general in attendance watching him compete.
“I had lots of people that I knew from town office and other friends from the town that came to watch and actually Mayor Muzychka, he came and watched, so to have a figure like him come and watch it was just really phenomenal,” Chant said.
Now with the Games over it is back to his regular schedule of training and preparing a new routine.
“Yes, there’s not a downtime now. Because of the Games, our season has gone two months later than we had expected,” Chant said. “When we get back we’re going to start new choreography for our new season immediately.”
Chant said they have a theme in mind but doesn’t want to reveal anything until later in the season.
Chant said the biggest thing he learned from the Games is to not let the tiny details or mistakes get in the way of the bigger picture.
