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Italian
Pair Shines
Laura Magitteri and
Ondrej Hotarek |
March 10, 2008
Article & Photo © J.
Barry Mittan
With the World Championships coming to Italy in
2010, the Italian federation is working hard to strengthen
its entire team. The team already has strong ladies
and dance teams that can challenge for a medal and
experienced men. Now they are building a foundation
for pairs.
With the pairing of Laura Magitteri, 19, and Ondrej
Hotarek, 23, Italy had its first solid entry in pairs
competition at the senior level in several years.
Magitteri, who was born in Como, Italy, paired up
with Hotarek, who is from Brno in the Czech Republic
in January 2006. Hotarek formerly skated for the
Czech Republic with Veronika Havlickova.
"I was working with Karl Pfeiffer in Oberstdorf
for a week," Hotarek said. "I told him
I didn't have a partner and he said that Italy wanted
a partner for Laura. We tried out and then I moved
to Italy in the winter." "I didn't want
to do pairs at first but my coach told me to try
it," Magitteri said. "Then I was real happy
about it. I liked being up in the air on the lifts."
"I like lifts because then I can breathe during
the program," Hotarek noted. "I found that
pairs is really exciting. In singles, you come to
practice to jump and spin. In pairs, there are so
many elements that you never get bored. And you don't
have to be perfect on jumps if all of your other
elements are good."
In their first season together
last year, the couple placed ninth at the European
Championships and 16th at Worlds. "We did Italian Nationals and then
it was straight to Europeans," Hotarek said. "We
only had one year together."
This season, they participated in their first two
ISU Grand Prix events, placing sixth at Skate America
and eighth at the Cup of Russia. They competed at
the Nebelhorn Trophy in late September but couldn't
finish due to an injury that also cut into their
training time for the Grand Prixs.
"In the last minute of practice the day before
the short program, the Polish team was skating backwards
and hit us," Hotarek recalled. "Both of
them fell on Laura. She had a bruised thigh and a
sprained neck and shoulder. She was in pain but we
skated the short. Then in practice, the pain was
so bad she couldn't even move her head and nothing
was working so we had to withdraw. She had to take
ten days off to recover so we had less than two weeks
to get ready for Skate America."
Hotarek began skating when
he was five. He had a triple toe loop by 14, landed
everything up to the triple lutz and even tried
a few quad toe loops in practice. "My father was a skater who competed
at Czech Nationals, but he had to quit when he was
16," he related. "My mother was a volleyball
player so I come from a sports family. I was second
and third in juniors in the Czech Republic, but someone
would jump over me and win every time. I did two
Junior Grand Prixs in singles, but without a triple
axel I knew I had no chance. That's when I chose
pairs. I knew there was always one place in pairs
at Europeans and Worlds."
Magitteri didn't start skating
until she was eleven. "I
was doing gymnastics from the time I was five until
eleven," she recalled. "I was up to the
fifth level, training with a former world champion,
but then he moved to another city. My favorite event
was the balance beam. Then I wanted to do acrobatic
rock and roller skating, so I tried figure skating
too."
"I skated in ladies until two years ago," she
continued. "I was up to junior ladies, but I
only learned a triple toe when I was 15 and didn't
have other triples. And I was too nervous."
Karel Fajfr and Rosanna Murante
coach the skaters, who train in Milan, Italy and
Oberstdorf, Germany. In the summer, the couple
also trained in Courmayeur and Andalo in Italy
and Newark, Delaware in the U. S. "We were in Newark for five weeks working
with Jeff Digregorio and Ron Ludington," Hotarek
said. "We learned a lot in five weeks. Before
all the big events, we go to Oberstdorf for two or
three weeks." The skaters usually work for two
hours a day on pairs elements and another hour on
singles skating plus an hour of ballet and another
hour of off ice lifts five days a week. On Saturday,
they usually skate one pairs session.
For the short program, the
skaters have included a throw double loop and side-by-side
double axels. In the long, they have a throw double
salchow and throw double loop, side-by-side double
toe loops and a double axel-double toe sequence. "Laura's
triple toe isn't consistent enough to have in the
program," Hotarek said. "With the new judging
system, it's not worth it to try it. Our goal for
this season is to have a clean triple twist."
Frank Dehne choreographed the
couple's 2007-08 programs. "Both
of the programs are new," Hotarek explained. "I
think it improves your skating when you try new things.
Sometimes with an old program, you get stuck."
For the short program, they
are using "Chi
Mai" by Enrico Morricone from the soundtrack
of "The Life and Times of David Lloyd George". "It's
slow music, like classical music, easy to skate to" Hotarek
said. "I heard it in our ballet lessons and
we liked it so much, we put it on the ice. We got
it from the Best of Enrico Morricone CD."
Their long program contains
music from the soundtrack of "Grease". "I don't like to stay
in the same kind of music for the short and the long," Hotarek
said. "We like to have fun and entertain people
and I liked doing Saturday Night Fever last year
so Laura said lets try Grease. It was hard to cut
it without singing. I usually cut my own music on
the computer so I can have it exactly as I want it
and can change it to fit in the elements."
For some shows, the duo used
two vocal selections from "Grease": "Summer Loving" and "Born
to Hand Jive". "It was a lot of fun," Hotarek
said. "We tried to do it just like in the movie."
Magitteri primary passion is
music. "I love
pop music and love to go to the disco with my friends," she
said. "I like to dance." She also plays
the piano. Hotarek said, "I like everything
but country music. I listen to anything from the
Red Hot Chili Peppers to Justin Timberlake. It depends
on my mood, but it has to have rhythm."
Hotarek also noted "my
Playstation is a good friend. I get a lot of books
in Czech when I'm at home. I like fantasy and science
fiction and books about Eastern philosophy and
Buddhism. My favorite is Seven Years in Tibet.
I don't collect anything but I send postcards home
from wherever I go. We have a whole wall of postcards."
But sports are his passion. "I've spent all
my life doing sports," he said. "I like
snowboarding, windsurfing, inline skating and extreme
sports. I did the triathlon in school and want to
try bungee jumping and base jumping." He graduated
from a sports college and hopes to attend university
in Milan. "But I have to learn more Italian," he
admitted. "My Italian is not good, but I'm improving.
The people are great, so open and friendly."
