Ice dancing attracts thousands of Shanghai enthusiasts

Former skating champion Yang Zhixue (middle) with some of his charges Photo: Zhao Yashan

It is not a traditionally popular sport in Shanghai but figure skating is gaining a hold in the city. Ice sports - speed skating, ice hockey and figure skating - have been part of the scene in the north of China for years but, at least for figure skating, that is changing.

Figure skating has been named as one of the sports in the 2014 Shanghai City Games and at the weekend thousands of spectators packed the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center in Pudong for the Shanghai Cup of the China International Skating Union Grand Prix.

Although the professionals have left town to compete and show their ice dancing skills in other cities around the world there is a growing number of amateurs who also want to glide, twist and leap with grace on ice rinks.

Amateurs like the dedicated 10-year-old Feng Yini who comes to her local Century Star skating club almost every day after school. "Sometimes I can't finish my homework before going skating so I have to do it afterwards and then it's usually midnight when I finish everything."

At the rink Feng will spend two hours exercising and one and a half hours training on the ice every day. She is a grade 5 skater at present - the gradings run from beginner level at grade 1 to grade 10 although the levels up to grade 5 are a lot easier to attain than the higher rankings. Her favorite ice skating move at present is the Biellmann spin, where a skater spins on one foot while holding the other leg over and behind her head.

Now an obsession

When she started skating Feng found the sport just "interesting" but now she is obsessed with it, her mother, Zhou, explained. The girl has given up all other sports to concentrate on her ice moves.

It's a demanding sport - most skaters will fall and hurt themselves often before they master the basic turns, spins and jumps required. And it takes a lot of time to train, which added to a demanding schedule of school homework means the little girl does not get to sleep much more than seven hours a night.

Her parents are behind her every inch of the way and make sure she gets as much sleep as she can every day. Zhou denies that the girl is being pushed too hard. "She's lucky to find something she loves at such a young age," she proudly told the Global Times.

So Zhou is there with her daughter every day training at the ice rink and accompaning her back home after 10:45 pm at night when the session ends - though the girl usually falls asleep in the car on the way home. If Feng wanted to become a professional her mother would give her every support.

"We parents will be supportive if our children want to do this," Zhou said. Supporting an ice skater can be costly. The family is now paying a gold standard skating coach to train Feng and every hour's training sets the family back 200 yuan ($36.64). The Century Star skating club has 15 professional and full-time figure skating coaches. Three of them are gold standard coaches, who have to be at least grade 8 standard skaters themselves.

Injury risk

And there is a risk of injury. Even the top skaters can be hurt as happened at the weekend during the International Skating Union Grand Prix when two of the world's leading skaters collided and had to have medical treatment. Feng knows something of the dangers already - she suffered a fractured skull when she was just 8 and was gliding past another skater whose skate blade struck her as she came out of a spin.

"I am not at all scared of the rink," Feng said when asked whether the accident had affected her enthusiasm. Zhou echoed her daughter's enthusiasm.

Feng was lucky to escape relatively unscathed from her ice rink accident. Her coach, Yang Zhixue, had to change his life around when he was injured in training one day.

Yang was the national youth figure skating champion between 1998 and 2002 and was a key member of China's national youth ice skating team in 2008. But that year he seriously injured himself when he fell badly, attempting a complex pirouetting leap.