As a little girl, I may not have been the most talented of the tiny tots. My parents dutifully signed me up for all of the classes that little girls take. There were tumbling and gymnastics. To this day, I still can’t even do a cartwheel. Dance class was an epic fail. You know how every dance recital has that one kid off to the side doing their own thing, twirling to music no one else can hear, completely separate from the rest of the dancers? Yeah, that was me. And then there was ice skating. I hated the cold and I was absolutely terrible. I’m not sure I ever got past the point where I gripped the wall just to stay upright.
The fabulous Jay Manuel of ‘America’s Next Top Model’ fame once stated about one of the modeling contestants, who was particularly talented and happened to hail from Russia: “There’s a reason those Russians compete and win gold”. (Or something to that effect.) His point being that Russians are strong competitors who take their competitions seriously. For instance, they start training them extremely young.
Consider the tiny girl in this video. She is only THREE YEARS OLD. She started skating at just a year old. In only two years, she skates and glides across the ice like a tiny seasoned professional. When she takes the ice, she looks like just another adorable kid, but when she starts to skate, she shocks everyone in the rink. I was mesmerized by her performance. If this is how she skates at just three years old, she is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her at the top of an Olympic podium at some point in the future.
