Figure skating stars ready to shine

As the music of Romeo and Juliet echoed throughout the ice rink, China's figure skating pairs Pang Qing and Tong Jian acted out their own moving love story on the ice below.

With their newly choreographed free-skating routine, Pang and Tong, the 2006 world champion pair, are expecting a glorious new season.

"We want to show something new to the spectators this time," said Tong of their new free skating routine, which was choreographed in the US. "Although we still use the same routine for the short program as we did last season, we changed some of the details to meet the needs of the new rules."

According to Tong, they have added some new linking footwork to some of the transitions of their new free skating routine, raising the overall difficulty level considerably.

"We need to almost turn around in every transition. Even I thought it would be impossible during the choreographing period," said Tong. "But our choreographer told us that we are capable enough to do it, and now we know that we can."

Through their passionate performances and exquisite interpretation of the music, Pang and Tong physically narrate the classic tragedy to the audience. Although the music has been used in many figure skating routines, they expect to give it their own flavor.

"We don't want to finish the routine by just completing the technical elements. We want to tell a real story," said Tong. "We want to feel the characters with our hearts and display the routine with our own characteristics."

Since they teamed up in 1993, Pang and Tong have always been considered the No 2 pairs skaters in China, always in the shadow of multiple world champions and two-time Olympic bronze medalists Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo.

Making quiet progress, the pair jumped into fifth place at the 2002 World Championships, only two years after their international debut.

They claimed the bronze medal at the 2004 World Championships, and just narrowly missed the podium at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, settling for fourth place.

One month later, they finally stepped atop the highest podium at the World Championships. Unfortunately they got bogged down with bouts of illness and injury in the 2006-07 season.

After Pang developed a nephritic disease, the pair was forced to miss almost the entire season. Coupled with the stitches Tong received on his forehead following a car accident, the pair was left with little time to train systematically for the Asiad and World Championships, held at the beginning of the year.

They settled for two silvers at the Asiad and 2007 World Championships, but they are expecting to regain their form and reach the top of the podium again as the season gets underway.

"Although we haven't reached our best form at present, we will try to do well with the new routine in the Grand Prix series and World Championships this season," Tong told China Daily. "The new season will be exciting. It should be a glorious season for us."

With Shen/Zhao withdrawing from the competitions after being crowned world champions for the third time in March, this may be the first season for the 28-year-olds Pang/Tong to take over the torch.

"Without Shen/Zhao, we seemed to lose the goal we are chasing," Tong said.

"But we want to show ourselves right now. It's not that they've been unbeatable. We just haven't found the right way to show our own characteristics. We hope our changes this season will sparkle the audience."

After Pang's unexpected cold spoiled the pair's season-opening competition at the 2007 Figure Skating National Championships last week, they finished runners-up to their Chinese teammates Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao. Having caught a cold on the first day of the competition, Pang struggled to finish their free skating routine, which required lots of strength.

After the competition, Tong admitted that they were not ready for those unexpected accidents. But he said that ordeal gained them valuable experience.

"We are still not that skilled at our new routine and the national competition is a good test," said Tong. "But we have learned our lesson from that. We still did our best, although we were in very bad condition."

From October 25 to 28, Pang/Tong will start this season's international competition in Reading in the US, for the first stop of the ISU Figure Skating Grand Prix.

Two Zhangs on the way

Together with Pang/Tong, the younger two Zhangs are also strong competitors for China on the world figure skating stage.

At the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, the young pair moved the world by resuming their performance even after Zhang Dan badly injured her leg after she crashed awkwardly into the ice while attempting an unprecedented throw quad salchow.

They ended up winning silver medals at the Games.

For the new season, they have developed new routines for both the short program and free skating.

The pair's short program will follow a piano fantasia of Maksim Mrvica, and their free skating music will be the soundtrack of the romantic movie The Myth.

It is the first time they will perform a love story on the ice.

"The routine for our free skating will tell a story, and some difficult movements have been added to lifts and jumps," said Zhang Hao in an introduction. "We still have to improve some details of the new routines and we hope to achieve good results in all the competitions this season."

The first Grand Prix stop for the two Zhangs will be in Paris from November 15 to 18.

(China Daily 10/16/2007 page22)