SynchroNice / Fourth Edition / 2019

As you get older your eyes deteriorate: first you need glasses for reading and years later maybe even a pair for nearsightedness. This goes for me as well, nowadays I’m always wearing two pairs of glasses, though I never thought that you could get double vision as you get older. But when I was in Tampere to shoot the 2nd qualifier of the Finnish competition, it almost scared me. You look so confident and natural on the ice, have you always been skating? When we were young, we went skating with our family quite a lot. Then, when we turned 6 years old, we started in Skating School at the Espoo Figure Skating Club. Our family has always enjoyed winter sports and skating has always played a big part in our family. Our father played professional ice hockey for various teams in Finland and even played for the Finnish National Team on junior level. He was always a huge motiva­ tor and always encouraged us to start ice skating. Then there’s our little brother Niklas, he plays ice hockey in Espoo, for the Blues Juniors. Yep, sometimes it feels like the whole family is always at some hockey arena and yes, always at different arenas as well. And when did you switch to Synchronized Skating? We got the idea to try synchronized skating from our close friend who asked us to try out for the team with her. After that we skated four seasons for Espoo Figure Skating Club (ETK) and we even­ tually made it up to the club´s advanced novice team, Blue Arrows. We had a great time over there but when we turned 13 years old we attended a ‘try out’ to join the teams of Helsinki Figure Skating At first, I thought it was a trick of the eye: I saw this young lady with a charming smile in a rotating wheel on the left of the ice rink and a second later, when I was about to take her picture, I saw her smiling in the right wheel and when I aimed at the right wheel, she was back in the left….how on earth was this possible? I asked Coach Kaisa Arrateig for an explanation, but she said:“Just talk to them”. Them?? Hi there, and yes “them’ because we are twins. We are Petra Johanna Kaarto and Erika Susanna Kaar­ to but our teammates just call us `Petrika´. Wow, and how old are you? We were born on January 11th, 2002 in Helsinki, Finland and Erika is the older twin by 13 minutes and she usually tends to make the wiser decisions. We currently live in Espoo, which is a neighboring city of Helsinki. And the 2 of you are skating with? This is already our second season skating with Team Fintastic. Is Kaisa your head coach? No, Milja Sarkkinen is our head coach, but we also work with Kaisa Ar­ rateig and with Laura Spiridovitsh, Pia-Sofia Pokki­ nen, Ari-Pekka Nurmenkari and Elina Lindfors. SYNCHRO NICE 139