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| Lucky Thirteen for Germany's Liebers |
| Published on June 03, 2008 |  
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Peter Liebers
June 3, 2008
Article by J. Barry Mittan
 The number thirteen is unlucky for some but not for Germany's Peter Liebers. Liebers finished 13th in his first European Championships in 2008. It earned him a trip to Worlds, following in the footsteps of his father, Mario, who competed at Worlds from 1976 to 1980. He finished 32nd in his first time at Worlds in Sweden in March. Liebers was also 13th in his only appearance at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in 2006. He finished second in Germany this season.
The 19-year-old began skating when he was six. "I started because my family skated," he said. "My father was East German champion and my older brother, Martin, also competes now for Germany." He landed his first triple jump, a salchow, by the time he was eleven and his first quad, the toe loop, in September 2007. "I want to land the quad lutz now," he said. "I tried it in 2006 before I broke my leg."
"It was my left leg," he continued. "I was doing a straight line step sequence in training after Junior Worlds in 2006 and hit a hole in the ice and fell. I had to have a metal insert in my leg that finally came out in March 2007. So I didn't get back on to the ice until May. I had to do a lot of weights and riding on the stationary bike while I was off the ice so I wouldn't put too much pressure on my leg."
For the last six years, Viola Striegler has coached Liebers, who trains in his hometown of Berlin most of the year. "Last year in May, I went to a training in camp by the Baltic Sea. In 2002, I went to Alexei Mishin's camp and in 2003, I went to a camp with Viktor Kudriatsev, but mostly I train in Berlin."
"Now I train three hours a day on the ice, six days a week," he added. "I have athletics off ice three times a week and twice a week I go to ballet. Sometimes I do yoga with a girl from our practice group. And sometimes we do special training in a low oxygen room."
I'm practicing the quad toe-triple toe, but I don't have it in my program yet because the quad toe is not so consistent. I land it maybe six times in ten and then sometimes I don't have the speed for the second jump. I'm hoping to have it in the short program next season."
For 2007-08, Liebers used a triple axel, triple flip and triple lutz-triple toe combination in the short. In the long, he did triple axel-triple toe, triple salchow-triple toe, and double axel-double toe combinations. His solo jumps were the quad toe loop, triple lutz, triple flip, and triple toe loop.
Two former German ice dance champions choreographed his programs. Hendryk Schamberger choreographed his short program to music from the "National Treasure" soundtrack. Rene Lohse did his long program to "Ying and Yang", a selection of Asian music that Lohse used in a free dance with Kati Winkler. Andreas Fischer polishes his programs at the rink. "He's the coach for off ice jumping and the synchro team, Team Berlin," Liebers said. "He helps change small things in the program."
"I always choose my own music," said Liebers. "Then I ask my coaches if it's OK. I cut my own music on the computer. I've done it for the last three years. Before that, my brother cut it for me. For the short program, I saw the movie and went out to find who did the music. My father also heard it on the radio and said that it would be good for skating."
"The long program music started with the music from the free program of Kati and Rene. I used it before for a short program in 2004-05, then added some more pieces of Japanese music to make the long. I got some of the martial arts moves from movies and some others from Rene. I only used it as a short program for one year, but I liked the music. So it wasn't too much work to do it as a long program. I usually keep each program two years unless one is not very good. I had the same music for both programs for last season before I was injured and didn't get to use them."
Liebers uses "Dirty Boogie" by Brian Xetzer for his gala program. "I did it in the gala with my brother and Clemens Brummer," he said. Off ice, he listens to oldies rock from the 1970s and 1980s and some techno. "My brother likes it and I've started to like it too," he noted.
"I spend most of my time off the ice with my family or my girlfriend," Liebers said. "She's a skater too. My father and my brother and I are building a model railway in our garden. It's really big, like 1:22.5 scale. My father started it and Martin and I add to it. We built the track and the buildings and sometimes some train cars. I use the computer a lot and play some video games. Sometimes I go to the cinema." He also plays some soccer and ice hockey.
Liebers is in his final year of high school. "I had lots of exams this year that put me behind in my training," he admitted. "Next year, I will go into the German Army sports group for a year, then maybe to university. I want to do something with biology, the scientific side, maybe genetics."
"I'm not sure how long I'll skate," he said. "It depends on how the next years will be. I want to try until at least the 2014 Olympics. My goal for this year was just to show two clean programs and do a clean quad toe in competition. The placement was not important. I had no expectations at the start because I had been out of competition for a year and a half. I just wanted to compete again. It was hard to skate a whole program at first. I was nervous and made many mistakes. At Europeans, I thought I could make 15th at best, then my short was not very good. So I was just hoping to keep two places for Germany for next year."
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