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August 31, 2007 - Junior Grand Prix - Lake Placid, NY, USA
“Iliana Rozanova?”
The girl glances to her left with a look of vague annoyance, possibly intended for either the interloper who’s disturbed her 10 minute break or the wind that keeps her cigarette from lighting.
“I’m Shayne Hollander. I—I wanted to introduce myself,” Shayne says, flustered now that Iliana’s blue eyes are staring right through her. “Um, I’m not sure you’re supposed to smoke here.”
Rozanova’s lips purse around her cigarette as the cherry finally lights and she takes a drag. “Okay,” she says, blowing smoke. She uses one perfectly-manicured hand to slip her pink lighter into the little designer purse hanging off her forearm, holding her cigarette with the other. She looks so sophisticated. She’s also looking at Shayne like she’s a particularly irritating cockroach crawling across her (probably very expensive marble) bathroom floor.
“You’re awesome on the ice.” Shayne is sure her face is bright red in a way that has nothing to do with the heat.
“Yes,” Iliana says, shrugging once before returning to her cigarette.
Shayne stands there, expecting Iliana to say at least something more in return (at least a perfunctory thank-you), but Iliana just keeps leaning against the wall, staring off into the distance.
“Um,” Shayne mumbles. “Anyway, I should go. They’re waiting for me. But good luck tomorrow.”
At that, Iliana does slide her eyes over to Shayne. “You will not be so nice when I beat you.”
“That’s not happening.” Shayne can hear her mother in her ear, telling her that she sounds rude and aggressive, that Shayne should be the bigger person.
Iliana smirks and blows smoke in Shayne’s direction. “See you tomorrow.”
And we’re all holding our breath as the final scores come in. It’s so rare you see performances like the ones we’ve seen here today, where you have two of probably the strongest junior figure skaters in the sport going head to head in both short program and free skate, and they both just gave it their all. That free skate was just unbelievable. It’s hard to imagine that since Mao Asada landed a triple Axel in 2004, we haven’t seen a single successful triple Axel in a juniors’ international competition, and today we saw two, one from Shayne Hollander of Canada and another from Iliana Rozanova of Russia.
Here’s Ottawa’s Shayne Hollander. From everything we’ve seen, she may not be the most sociable, but she skates with almost textbook technical precision. I mean, look at that replay of her triple Axel, look how clean it is. Look at the height she gets in the lead-up. This could be used as a reference video for other skaters. Incredibly smart, incredibly athletic, incredibly dedicated to the sport.
And now here’s Iliana Rozanova. At the World Juniors in March, Rozanova took home a gold for Russia with a total score of 169.84, even though she was skating on an injured right knee. She’s known for her grace and musical interpretation on the ice, and that really shines in the way she moves through every element of her program. It just looks effortless. Really, really beautiful skating.
“Are you busy, Rozanova?”
Iliana smiles placidly as she looks away from the opposite side of the rink, where Hollander sits with her family, stone-faced and chewing on her thumb nail. “No,” she says. Her coach huffs.
An incredible finish for Iliana Rozanova, who takes first with a new personal best, a 175.35 combined total score. These are unreal numbers. The triple Lutz-triple toe in her short program and that back spiral into the triple Axel wowed the judges.
Shayne Hollander takes second with a 174.83. She wobbled a bit during her triple toe loop in her opening combo, which cost her some execution points. Still, this was an absolutely incredible performance.
In third place comes Caroline Zhang, with 169.25, a personal best record for the young skater...
“Alright, can I get a beautiful smile, ladies? Look over here.”
Shayne tightens her arms around her collection of stuffed animals. Her haul from fans is good today: six Beanie Babies, which are her favorites, including a white bear printed with red Canadian maple leaves.
The stuffed animals are a poor distraction from the fact that her score is an entire point below Rozanova’s. They had the same technical elements in their short program, and almost identical elements in their free skates. Rozanova had turned into her triple Axel much stronger, and even if her technique was a little sloppy, she got great rotations which probably gave her a better GOE.
“Can I get a smile, Hollander?” the photographer requests.
Shayne snaps out of her own thoughts and forces a smile. Rozanova is a good skater now, but she’s not reliable. There’s not much height or speed to her jumps, just rotation, which means Rozanova has just one or two years left of landing triple Axels. Shayne’s smile gets a little brighter.
“We’d be a fool to pass on a skater like Iliana, Mr. Rozanov. She’s just an incredible athlete to have on our roster.”
Iliana can feel her father’s eyes burning a hole into the side of her face, but she takes a sip of her tonic water silently and refuses to look at him. Instead Iliana keeps looking at the middle aged woman—Elizabeth—who will now be her manager, and at the woman’s ill-fitting cream-colored pantsuit. The suit is too tight on her arms, like she gained weight after she bought it and then she never bothered to have it let out. The effect is ugly. Unflattering.
“And congratulations again on making it to the final, Iliana. Next year really can’t come soon enough for the U.S.”
Down on the floor below, almost directly opposite of where Iliana and her father stand on the hotel restaurant’s mezzanine, Hollander is sitting with her mother. She is eating a plate of salmon and some green vegetable; her mother is having a glass of wine. Quaint, Iliana thinks. A pleasant little Canadian scene of mother-daughter bonding.
“She needs discipline,” her father says, without taking his eyes off of llyana. “She can be... how do you say... lazy. And she is old.”
Elizabeth laughs in the uncomfortable, reflexive way women often do around Iliana’s father. “Well, I find that hard to believe. She broke the record today with that score, and she’s not even eighteen yet.”
Iliana longs for a glass of champagne, or for a shot of vodka. It takes the edge away from these insufferable parts of her life. Still, Iliana stares vacantly at Elizabeth. “I promise to work very hard for you.”
“I have no doubt you will.”
Her father steps on Iliana’s toe with enough force to make her eyes water. “You listen. Don’t speak,” he whispers in Russian.
Iliana smiles through the pain.
Shayne has run her combos again and again and again in her head. She’s organized the Beanie Babies on the spare bed in her suite a half-dozen times now (first by color, then by name alphabetically, and finally by a personal subjective ranking), and picked up then put down her book three times. She’s not going to be able to relax tonight unless she physically exhausts herself. She just can’t get Rozanova off her mind: the smell of her cigarette smoke, the quirk of her lips when they accidentally locked eyes from the stands, her accent—
Shayne might as well go to the gym. The hotel’s gym is mostly decent, though not as good as the one at the arena, and it’ll work okay as a distraction technique. She stretches perfunctorily then hops on an upright bike after picking something random on her iPod.
Her short program for JGP Finals will need to be rethought. Changing her opening to a triple-flip triple-toe loop combination might buy her some extra points. The triple Axel is great, but Rozanova has a triple Axel too. Relying on it would be stupid.
Someone takes a seat on the bike directly next to Shayne. She looks up in annoyance, ready to complain, but she almost freezes on the spot. It’s Rozanova, dark blonde hair pulled back severely, wearing a black sports bra and the shortest bike shorts Shayne’s ever seen.
Immediately Shayne looks down at the bike’s handlebars. Her face is probably bright red. It’s not fair that Rozanova gets to be pretty. Shayne’s perfectly fine looking, but Rozanova is something else. She’s got long limbs and a graceful way of carrying herself, so that she looks elegant even in gym clothes.
Shayne bites the inside of her cheek. It’s just stupid jealousy. Rozanova is a pretty and talented skater who beat Shayne’s all-time best by a single point. Every girl on the ice is probably jealous of Rozanova. Shayne pedals a little faster.
Rozanova pedals faster, too. Unbelievable, Shayne thinks. Everything about Iliana Rozanova is unbelievable. She can’t even let Shayne ride a fucking exercise bike without turning it into a competition.
Well, Shayne won’t let her win that easy. She moves her feet as fast as she can, rising up on the balls of her feet, and focuses on keeping her breath steady. She ignores the strain building in her muscles and the sweat dripping down her face.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. Shayne is starting to flounder a little bit, but Rozanova keeps it up. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Rozanova slows down first and wipes her face with her bicep and a dramatic sigh.
The tension in the room snaps. Shayne stops pedaling and takes in a huge, gasping breath. Elation bubbles in her stomach as she flops herself down against a rack of equipment on the floor, and Rozanova takes space opposite her.
For a few moments, they just sit and try to catch their breath together, eying one another up. Rozanova sips at her water bottle.
And Shayne resolutely, completely does not look below Rozanova’s shoulders, to her tits heaving inside that black sports bra or at the way Rozanova’s spread her legs. She is not going to imagine how soft Rozanova’s skin probably is, slick right now with the sweat of a good workout, or look at the little silver Playboy bunny charm in Rozanova’s belly button ring. All of that would be weird for Shayne to do, which is why she isn’t letting herself think about any of it.
Rozanova offers the water bottle to Shayne, shaking it at her. It takes a second for Shayne to realize what Rozanova’s doing, and then she smiles weakly, taking the bottle. The water’s blessedly cool and refreshing, and Shayne realizes abruptly how dry her mouth has gotten. The mouthpiece of the water bottle has a faint aftertaste of cherry. Is that Rozanova’s Chapstick? If Shayne’s face weren’t already red, it definitely is now. Shayne hands the bottle back to Rozanova, who takes a sip, and then passes it back. This time, as Shayne hands it back, their fingers linger, layered one on top of another.
Rozanova’s hands are soft, just like Shayne imagined. Her nails are short but manicured, painted a simple pink color. Shayne’s unpolished, bitten-up nails look grubby in comparison.
“What a fucking day, huh?” Rozanov says, still panting.
“Yeah, totally.” Shayne’s tongue feels two sizes too big for her mouth. She’s clumsy and stupid compared to Rozanova, like always: bitten nails, unsteady turns, unable to remember something as simple as bringing a water bottle to the gym.
“It’s everything you dreamed of?” Rozanova is smiling at Shayne in a way that could either be friendly or mocking.
Shayne’s never been good at telling those two things apart, so she answers earnestly: “Almost.”
Rozanova shrugs one shoulder with a frown so fake even Shayne can tell it’s not real. “Sorry.”
“No you’re not,” Shayne says. A smile is creeping across her own face.
Rozanova grins. “174 is... is nice, yes?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome. It would’ve been a record high score.” Shayne takes the water bottle from Rozanova one more time.
“I am leaving Russia,” Rozanova says, like they’re friends catching up over a cup of coffee. “Is going to be big news soon.”
“Did you age out of Russia’s senior team?” Shayne means it mostly as a joke, but in classic Shayne Hollander fashion, when the words leave her mouth they sound flat. More like legitimate shit-talking. She winces.
But Rozanova just laughs. “Something like that. You know, little girls in Russia, they are training quad toe loop?”
“What?” Shayne laughs breathlessly.
Rozanova nods. “Quadruple toe loop. Me, I have only triple. Is nothing compared to quad. I am old. So I go to Boston now, for Boston Skating Club, after Grand Prix.”
“Shit.” Endorphins are flying in Shayne’s bloodstream. A quad? Maybe for some of the barely-pubescent Junior skaters, but it’s hard to imagine anyone past age fifteen pulling off a jump like that. Shayne’s eyes slide over to Rozanova’s, and she realizes that Rozanova is... is staring at her chest, at the way her tank top strap has slid off her shoulder to reveal a bit of her plain blue compression bra.
Rozanova doesn’t even bother to look ashamed at being caught staring. She just keeps on smiling like nothing happened. “We will be seeing each other more.”
“Yeah, I guess.” A warm silence settles between the two of them. It feels... strangely friendly. Or maybe that’s the dehydration confusing Shayne. “I’ll just have to work on my quads.”