SynchroNice / Third Edition / 2018

for Les Suprêmes Senior. They are Marilyn Langlois, Pascal Denis and Amélie Brochu with Marilyn being the head coach. The two, Pascal and Marilyn are extremely creative and both responsible for our choreography. Pascal helps us especially on our skating skills, our body placements for individual technique and the pair element. He always has a solution to our problems, where Marilyn is the determined person who always finds a way to give us even more motivation to succeed. She will ensure that we can all achieve our goals, and will always push us to give the best of ourselves. She also has excellent knowledge of the technical elements of synchronized skating. Amélie is nicknamed our “Laser” because she is able to analyse and locate every detail, she is a precious help to improve the unison in our programs. We also sometimes have former Suprêmes skaters working with the team and outside the ice, we also have a physical trainer; two dance teachers, one for ballet, and the other for choreography, as well as a sports psychologist and we are often fortunate to have other specialists coming from different artistic backgrounds such as Cirque du Soleil to improve our programs by introducing new ways to lift, highlights, or by working on our interpretation. We are really lucky to be surrounded by such a good team and if Les Suprêmes do get better from season to season, it’s totally thanks to them. How important is the choice of music? It’s not that I have any preferences, but it’s true that music can be very important in our sport. I believe the most impor- tant thing is to find the perfect harmony between your music and your choreography, one shouldn’t damage the other. Music styles vary from year to year. if you pay attention you’ll also see what I appreciate so much, the better teams are able to interpret all music. Is Synchronized Skating moving in the right direction? I believe it helps if we could mix more often with other skating disciplines at events like the Shanghai Trophy. This style of competition gives us a great opportunity to promote synchronized skating. If other teams and fans might come out of it, I think we at least will gain more recognition. I believe we have also started to gain more recognition from within our own international federation, the ISU, and I seriously believe it’s important that we join the Olympic Games. We have to be more visible in the media because I feel many people would end up falling in love with our sport. For now, we’re very happy to have SynchroNice though. How about it in Canada? I think the sport is still growing in Canada, despite it being a big country, It still remains more popular in the east. Many teams at the Canadian championships come from Quebec or Ontario. And other countries, isn’t it boring that the same countries split up the medals over and over again? I do hope other nations like Japan, France or Hungary that made such progress are able to enter the Top 10 soon and Germany which is currently 10th could may- be climb into the top 5 and also start winning medals. We really need to continue to develop our sport, also to get into the Olympic Games one day. By “we really need” I actually mean other countries. So, you want it to be Olympic? I really hope that our sport will be Olympic one day. Our sport is gaining popularity each year, and we need to join the Olympics. The athletes are the best ambassadors for our sport and we just have to prove to the world that we deserve our spot at the Olympic Games. But in my opinion, we shouldn’t join the Olympic Games at the expense of the essence of Synchronized Skating. But I just trust upon the support we get and thank all who fight or work for us to make our voices heard. How about your plans? I just want to enjoy my years as a skater for a while and live my dream having worked so hard to get here. In the meantime, I like to learn as much as possible about Synchro, so when I stop skating, I can share what I’ve learned and maybe play a role in the development of Synchronized Skating. I have already thought about coming back to France one day for that. I however do like to travel and so I assume there will be other countries too that would like to develop Synchro or start a Synchro team, using my experiences. But no matter what, I treasure Canada in my heart and it will forever feel like home. Beautiful, nothing more to be said, thank you very much Agathe.  SYNCHRO NICE 85 Some of my teammates nicknamed me “Super Star”