Brien and Beckingham Bring Back Australian Pairs Skating

Emma Brien and Stuart Beckingham

November 29, 2005
Article & Photo © J. Barry Mittan 

Australia has not had a competitive pairs team at the senior international level since the heralded Danielle and Stephen Carr retired in 1998. But new Australian pairs champions Emma Brien and Stuart Beckingham made it on to the international scene in October when they made their debut at the Karl Schaefer Memorial in Vienna, Austria, the Olympic qualifying competition. They finished 12th but even that was a major achievement. "I never saw another pair skate except on videotape before our first practice session in Vienna," Brien admitted.

The bubbly blonde was actually the driving force behind the creation of the pairs team. Having known Beckingham for years, Brien approached him after Australian Nationals a year or two ago and asked him to be her partner. "I got his mobile phone number and kept bugging him until he relented and agreed to be my partner," she said. "I always wanted to do pairs and Stuart was the only guy around big enough to do it. I thought there was a good opportunity to do pairs and no one else took it, so I did. It's great to have someone else to talk to while you're skating." "It's hard to motivate yourself every day by yourself," Beckingham agreed, "especially if you're the oldest one in the rink like where I trained in Canberra."

Brien started out in sports as a gymnast when she was five, excelling in the parallel bars at local competitions, but admitted she was terrible on the balance beam. She was invited to train for the national team but as that would involve leaving her home, she declined the invitation, and quit the sport after a few years. "I took a year off, then I really needed to do a sport so I enrolled in skating school," she said. "I had never been skating before." She was eleven at the time. With such a late start, she never finished very high in ladies freestyle, reaching around eighth in juniors in 2003 at Nationals. She also skated synchro, reaching second at Australian Nationals with her team one time before she set her sights on pairs.

Beckingham had started skating only a bit earlier in life, when he was eight. "My Dad wanted to go cross country skiing so he decided we should go to the ice rink to see what it would be like," he said. "I don't know why. I saw an older guy skating at the end of the rink doing simple things like spread-eagles so I asked him to teach me a few things. I picked it up fairly quick so I asked my Mom if I could take some lessons and that was it."

After a few years competing in freestyle, he added ice dancing to his repertoire, skating six years at local competitions with Nicole Lamson and finishing fourth in juniors nationally in 1995. "I wanted to do pairs," he said, "but my coach didn't know how to teach it so I tried dance hoping to learn to work with a partner and then do pairs later but it didn't work out. I liked the lifts in dance, but I liked to jump too much to stay in it." He also played a bit of hockey, but noted, "I was always off sides or going the wrong way."

Concentrating on freestyle, he reached the podium at Australian Nationals in 2003-04 and 2004-05, winning the bronze medal. He also competed at the Four Continents Championships, finishing 15th in 2003 and 2004. But after the 2005 Four Continents Championships, he retired from freestyle. "I had finished university and was starting to work full-time for a sponsorship evaluation company," he said. "So I was going to have a major lifestyle change. I wanted to stay active in ice skating and Emma talked me into moving to Sydney and doing pairs with her. It turned out to be a good career move as well. As long as I get my hours in, the company is flexible about my schedule."

After Brien and Beckingham got together last March, they needed a coach, so they recruited Stephen Carr. "They asked me to work with them," Carr stated, "but I already had a full-time job working with Qantas and was coaching some other students as well so I had limited coaching time to give them. But I was impressed with their ambitions. Their ambitions were very high to get through all the levels of tests to compete as seniors in six months but they surprised me and did it. I knew their singles skating was good but getting the unison for pairs takes time."

"I could only schedule three times a week with them," he continued, "but we put together a solid training program and they stuck to it rigorously. They know what they have to do and they do lots of work by themselves. I didn't know how badly Emma wanted to do it, getting thrown across the rink and up in the air, but they've really impressed me with how they work." Even so, with Beckingham working full-time and Brien working 15 hours a week at a jewelry store, they can only manage about eight hours a week together on ice at the Sydney Ice Arena.

Cameron Medhurst choreographs their program with input from Carr on the technical side. Brien, of course, chose the music for both of their programs. They are using "Mister Pinstripes" by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy for the short and several cuts from "The Mask of Zorro" for the long. "I skated to 'Mister Pinstripes' one year in singles and another in synchro," she said. "For the long, I saw the movie and liked the soundtrack." Off ice, he listens to " a bit of everything" while she listens to punk and rock.

The couple plans to skate through the 2010 Olympic Games. "We're looking at it analytically," Carr stated, "and trying to build up their scores with each competition. They're doing a throw double loop and double salchow now and trying the throw triple salchow. All their side-by-side doubles are good including double axel. They're working on side-by-side triple loop because it's Emma's best jump even though it's Stuart's nemesis. And they're doing throw double twist."

"My big thing is to get the basics, the unison and the showmanship as a foundation," Carr continued. "That's what it's all about. You can have the big moves but without the rest of the foundation, your program is flat and if you miss, you have nothing. I want them to skate so that if they miss, they still have a watchable program that the audience will enjoy. I want them to use the new judging system as a springboard to the future, to get higher scores every competition. We're roughly on a four year plan, trying to improve year by year."

"We're still young," Beckingham noted. He's 24, while she's only 20. "As long as we're having fun and our work commitments allow it, we'll continue." "I'm hoping we'll be able to do well enough to do some skating shows," Brien added.

With their hectic schedule, the skaters relaxation time is limited. "My perfect day is to go to the beach and sun, then go shopping and then go to the city and dance all night," said Brien, who used to dance in school. "I also like fishing, inland. I don't go out on the ocean. Too many people get eaten by sharks." She also enjoys photography and art. "I like to barbecue," Beckingham said. "Sometimes I drive my jeep to the beach and surf." He's also a black belt in tae kwan do and does some skeet shooting.