A new article from the China Daily chronicles the steps they are taking to be on the Olympic podium in Vancouver. "Since the very beginning, our graceful and classic performances moved the judges and that was our advantage. But now those judges are expecting changes," Tong said. "If we want to move the judges again, we have to try something new to arouse their interest in us."
How exactly does a team accomplish this feat? For Pang and Tong it's changing everything. They've relocated to downtown Beijing for their training. New choreographers have been tapped. For this upcoming season Nikolai Morozov and Sarah Kawahara are the choreographers. And the music, no flowing classics this year. The Blues and the Tango are their choices this time around. "We have listened to various types of music and finally decided to apply the styles that are a departure from our past," Tong said. "We hope the new program attracts the attention of the judges."All of this while completely revamping their jump technique to get rid of those of those nasty negative GOE's the judges have hammered them with this past season. "We have had a hard time adapting to the new music while at the same time improving our techniques," Tong said. "We will try hard to change the bad impression judges have of our jumps."
A lot of hard work ahead for this team...hopefully it will pay off!
2 comments:
I think a new style could be just what Pang and Tong need! They're often overlooked (the author of the article must have forgotten that they're the 2006 World Champions)and skating to new styles of music will help them get noticed. I really hope Pang and Tong can fix their jumps too. They got downgraded quite a lot last season.
They're my favorite pair team that's still competing (and one of the only reasons I watch pairs) so I hope they have a lot of success in their last two seasons.
I really like this team too and I hope that they can be successful the next two years.
I just feel like they got off to a bad start last season with a really unexpected loss at Skate America and then it was damage control from that point.
Here's hoping this season is better!
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