This is a draft of an article that appeared in the hard copy Australian magazine OzSkater
in the January 2008 edition. The final article may have been edited prior to publication.
Karate Leads to Skating for Fernandez
by J. Barry Mittan
Australia's Nicholas Fernandez didn't start out to be a figure skater. His parents emigrated to Australia from Uruguay, where skating is virtually unknown. Starting when he was five, he was involved in gymnastics for two years, especially enjoying the trampoline but the gym where he was working shut down. When he was six, he started karate lessons at a local dojo, eventually earning an orange belt by the time he was ten. Beside the dojo was an ice skating rink; so one hot summer day when he was about eight, his mother took him over to the rink to skate at a public session.
"I really liked skating," Fernandez related. "So I started taking lessons. I was doing both skating and karate for a couple of years, but when I was ten, I had to choose one or the other. Karate didn't always hold my interest so I decided to concentrate on skating." He continued playing volleyball on his school team when he was in grades 8-10, but other than that, he spent his time in the rink.
Fernandez trains primarily at Penrith Ice Arena near Sydney with Sharyn Hollins. "She's always been my coach, right from the beginning," he said. "We have a great relationship." Fernandez practices for about two or three hours a day, six days a week and goes to the gym three times a week for off ice conditioning. "I used to do Pilates, but a friend of mine got hurt doing Pilates and it scared me off," he said.
In the summer of 2006, he went to the World Ice Arena in Colorado Springs to train for five weeks with Kathy Casey and returned there for a few more weeks in January 2007. "I had Kathy in a seminar in Sydney in March of 2006," Fernandez noted. "I liked her and she liked me so I decided to come work with her in the summer." While in Colorado, he also worked with Damon Allen and Janet Champion.
That helped the 17-year-old from Sydney make a good impression at his first international competition when he finished 18th at the 2007 Four Continents Championships in Colorado Springs. He was already used to the demands of high altitude skating. "I skated a full program each day," Fernandez noted, "either the long or the short." The Australian junior men's champion for 2006-07 also competed at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Germany, finishing 32nd. "My goal was to get to both Four Continents and Juniors," he added. "Eventually I hope to go to the 2010 Olympics."
In his short program at Four Continents, Fernandez used a triple salchow-double toe combination to go with a triple loop and double axel. In his long, he used triple loop-double toe and double axel-tap toe-double axel as well as a triple toe, loop, lutz, and salchow and a second double axel. "I did have a triple lutz-triple toe planned, but I decided to play it safe in the high altitude," he stated. "I learned all my triples in a couple of months when I was 14, except for the triple axel. I actually landed a clean triple loop first. All my triples are pretty consistent except the lutz and the flip. I've been training the triple axel but haven't landed a clean one on one foot yet. By the end of the year, I hope to get all the triples consistent and improve my spins and edge work."
Slav Baboshin choreographed his 2006-07 programs, neither of which was new for the season. His short was skated to music from "Xena, Warrior Princess" while his long was Tchaikovski's "Piano Concerto Number 1". "I'll change the long program next season," he stated. "Classical is not my type of music, but my coach liked it. I need to have something more fun, some funky action music. I want to be able to entertain the audience and attract a lot of attention with my new long."
His show program is to a vocal version of "Hernando's Hideaway". "I used it as a short program a few years ago and everyone loved it," he said. "So I knew it would be good as a show program. It was the first time I did any of my own choreography with help from my coach. I just can't think of things."
Fernandez said he had piano lessons as a youngster, but got bored with it. "I like to listen to clubby music," he added, "techno, dance, anything that pumps me up and gets the adrenaline flowing. I even took hip hop dance classes last year." He also likes to go see his friends and go shopping, anything to get out of the house. But he also spends a lot of time on the computer, chatting, instant messaging and going on MySpace.
The teenager is entering his final year of high school in Australia, where he is home schooled. "I like community and family studies," he noted. "After I finish competing, I want to try to get on Disney on Ice, then I want to be a coach. It's something I've always wanted to do. I also want to study at university to be a personal trainer or a sports psychologist."
