This is a draft of an article that appeared in the hard copy Australian magazine OzSkater
in the April 2007 edition. The final article may have been edited prior to publication.
Timmins No Longer Timid
by J. Barry Mittan
Australia's Dean Timmins admitted that he wasn't heavily involved in sports in his early years. "I tried a bit of sports but I couldn't get serious about anything," he said. "I did go rollerblading a lot. I wanted more than most sports offered and figure skating gave me that. I didn't go skating until I was about 12. I originally wanted to try ice hockey, but my mom wanted me to do figure skating. My classmates at school told me that was a girl's sport, but my mom got me some figure skates for my birthday. In the skating school, you had to have your own skates to get to a higher level than just beginners. Once I started doing things, I didn't think twice about hockey because there are so many more tricks you can do in figure skating."
Given his late start, it was five years before Timmins landed his first double axel and his first triple, a triple loop. Now he's training up through the triple flip and triple lutz, but hasn't included them in his programs. Last season, he included a triple salchow-double toe combination in his short and long programs, plus a triple loop and triple toe in the long, but his other combinations were double axel-double toe and double lutz-double toe. Timmins has practiced the triple axel, but not yet landed one cleanly. Part of the reason is that Timmins started training with Yuri Bureiko at Coventry Skydome in England in March 2006 and has relearned all his jumps.
"Yuri is absolutely amazing," Timmins said. "I could do some triples, but when I first started with him, he made me start over from the beginning. He wouldn't even let me jump at first and I felt really stupid when I was just skating and all the other skaters were doing triples. Yuri broke the techniques for all the jumps down and made me think about it logically. I never had that type of training before. Then Yuri had me do single jumps and when I could do them all correctly, he let me do doubles, and finally triples."
"I spent most of the year in the UK," said Timmins, who was born in Wolverhampton, England and moved with his family to Australia when he was eleven. "I felt really confident, but a week before Nationals, I hurt my knee. I tried to rest it, and then went back to Australia for Nationals, but when I went to physio, they found a stress fracture in my knee. The pain was ridiculous. I went ahead and did my short, but I didn't think I could do the long so I was going to withdraw. People told me to go ahead and do what I could so I skated the long but just did single jumps and placed fourth. Then I had to stay off the ice for two months until my knee healed. Just before Christmas, I showed the federation that I had recovered and was strong enough for Four Continents." He placed 20th there in his first senior international competition.
Normally, Timmins trains for three to four hours a day, five days a week. Ekaterina Borodatova coaches Timmins when he trains at Boondall and Acacia Ridge Ice Arenas in Brisbane, Australia. She also choreographed his 2006-07 programs. "I always find and cut my own music," Timmins said. "I find a lot of music at record stores and I download music from the Internet. I really enjoy cutting it. I like experimenting with different pieces of music." Timmins skated to "Harem" for his short and music from the soundtrack of "Amelie" for the long.
"I had the short program for two years," he continued. "The long program was the same as last year. Hopefully, I'll have two new programs for next season. I'm thinking about going a bit different this time. When I hear a good one, I'll feel it and I'll know I can do something with it." Off ice, he listens to Russian, French and classical music, ethnic music from other countries and Cirque du Soleil music. He also plays the guitar.
Timmins has finished a two-year college program as a remedial massage therapist. "I was working as a therapist until I got on the National team," he said, "then it got to be too much. After I finish competing, I'd like to be in some shows or coach. I do some Learn to Skate classes now to help little kids."
Off ice, he likes to go to the Gold Coast in Australia for body boarding and sun baking. He collects Johnny Depp movies and Cirque du Soleil DVDs.
