Chong and Barnes Take Bronze at Canadians

Andrea Chong & Spencer Barnes

February 14, 2006
Article & Photo © J. Barry Mittan 

Junior ice dancers Andrea Chong, 18, and Spencer Barnes, 19, achieved their goal of making the junior international team with a bronze medal at the 2006 Canadian Nationals. The 2004 novice dance champions had finished seventh in 2005. As a result, they only received one Junior Grand Prix assignment, finishing sixth at Skate Slovakia. Eventually, they hope to make the senior national team and go to Worlds and the Olympics.

Chong began skating when she was five. "One of my friends was skating and I thought it would be fun to go to CanSkate with her," she said. "I also tried swimming for two years and gymnastics but I liked skating more. I was just a recreational singles skater, but then a coach said I should try dance. I started when I was 12 and really liked it." Barnes started when he was eight. "I was doing swimming, soccer, volleyball and lots of different sports," he said. "I tried hockey for a year but I didn't like it. Skating was the sport I liked the best."

Coaches put the team together in 2001 and they have remained together since then. The couple trains at the Scarboro Figure Skating Club with coaches Carol Lane and Juris Razgulajevs. They practice on ice for three hours a day, six days a week and work on their own off ice for about five or six hours a week, mainly at the gym and doing ballet.

Lane and Razgulajevs also choreograph the couple's programs. For the 2005-06 season, they used "Historia del Amor" and "Mambo Number 5" for their Latin combination original dance. Their free dance was set to "Illusion de me Vida" and "Bordoneo y 900". "I wanted to do a tango," Barnes said. "I searched around a lot and finally found some good ones. It's different, kind of quirky." "Last year we did a classical free dance to 'Dangerous Liaisons' and we wanted to do something different," Chong added.

Barnes is currently in his first year at Ryerson University studying psychology. He also works at Roo's Gym in Ajax as a personal trainer. Chong is in Grade 12. She likes sciences, especially biology, and hopes to study kinesiology or something else in the health field. Both of them want to stay involved in the sport once they have finished competing, perhaps coaching on the side. Barnes is already starting to take his coaching certificate exams. He also does dance partnering.

Off ice, Chong likes to hang out with friends and go to the movies, mainly comedies and fantasies. She keeps a memento from every competition. Barnes likes to go to figure skating events, read and work out at the gym when he's not skating. The dancers have their own website at www.icedanceelite.com.