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Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating (CAN) 2016©International Skating Union (ISU)

Canadian ice dancers Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje are looking back at a distinguished career with three World medals and multiple other medals and titles and they are still major players in the game as they proved by taking the silver medal at the recent ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2019.

The 2018 ISU World Figure Skating bronze medalists had entered the Four Continents as a kind of dark horse since they had chosen to sit out the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Series this season and only competed internationally in the ISU Challenger event Autumn Classic in Canada in September. Instead of working on a daily basis with coach Nikolai Morozov and competing in the Grand Prix, the team took part in an exhibition tour of the Canadian Olympic Team for two and a half months throughout the country in the fall. It was a different kind of training and preparing.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) with coach Pasquale Camerlengo at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating (CAN) 2015©International Skating Union (ISU)

“We had to take a little bit more ownership of our daily training because we couldn’t bring our coach on tour. On our days off, we tried to get into a rink to be on normal ice – normal sized ice – and we tried to organize with our coaches so that we had them there as much as possible. We went to Detroit on one of our breaks to, at least, get a refresh with Pasquale [Camerlengo] and Igor [Shpilband],” Poje explained.

“We were close by there in Toronto or London, Ontario so we had a two week break and we drove down and it was nice to get a more competitive feel like at that stage of the tour. Then, also, there are so many judges across Canada so, whatever city we were in, we would try and get judges’ feedback,” Weaver said. “So we were very organized about our feedback that, at the end of the day, we were our own critics and we had to take, as Andrew said, ownership of our skating and we had to be able to judge every day whether it was a success or not and what we could improve. I think it was a great way for us to mature in that way and we had to decide if we happy or not. And so that also develops our own style; our own opinion of things and I think that does help our skating as well,” she continued.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating (CAN) 2017©International Skating Union (ISU)

Andrew also feels that training this way brought more of their own personalities to the programs. “We had to just judge it off the way it made us feel because we can’t, obviously, watch ourselves all the time. We would get it videoed and watch those videos but not every day. A lot of it just became our interaction and the way that it made us feel in the programs,” he shared.

Following the tour, the dancers prepared for the Canadian National Championships with Morozov and also worked with Camerlengo and Shpilband. “It’s a great asset: there are choreographers as well, Igor and Pasquale, and then otherwise Nikolai is boss for us. We’ve incorporated this group together and they are all so united for our cause and that’s a great feeling too,” Kaitlyn pointed out.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2019©International Skating Union (ISU)

For this post-Olympic season, the Canadians picked an unusual arrangement of “Libertango” for the Rhythm Dance. The Tango is a rhythm that goes very well with Weaver and Poje’s passion on the ice.

“Tango is one of our favorite rhythms to perform,” Weaver revealed. ”So when we were looking for music we wanted something different than we have done before. We heard this song with a different arrangement and right away we had an image to bring the romantic side of the tango. It is soft, subtle, nuance. This is something different for us but similar considering the rhythm,” she added.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2019©International Skating Union (ISU)

Their Free Dance is set to “Le S.O.S. d’un terrien en detresse” and this program is very special, because the dancers dedicate it to their friend, the late Denis Ten (KAZ), who was killed in July last year when two men wanted to steal mirrors from his car.

“In the beginning, it was very hard to even hear the music play. We chose this music before the tragedy happened because we were simply inspired by hearing it and watching him [Denis Ten] skate,” Kaitlyn explained. Ten had skated to this music in the Olympic season.

The dancers saw Denis’ program when they took part in his show in Kazakhstan in June, just weeks before the tragedy. “We couldn’t get it out of our minds and hearts. We thought: ‘This is really beautiful and we can tell this story’. So we created it with Pasquale and then, very soon after, the tragedy happened. We had to take a moment to say: ‘Should we change this program or not?’ But it became very clear to us to let this be our memorial to him. Which was very hard. So in the beginning it was very hard to even hear the music because he is so intertwined with it. We were able now to skate it and tell our story but there is never a day when he doesn’t come to mind: that he is our constant inspiration for this piece; constant inspiration in our lives because of who he was as a person. We always say: ‘Let this program bring light!’ We never want any negative feelings to be involved. We want this program to be really the best version of ourselves by giving that gratitude to him and, I think, it’s nice that people are able to feel how we feel,” Kaitlyn shared.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2019©International Skating Union (ISU)

Weaver/Poje resumed competing at Nationals in January and took their third National title. They went on to claim silver at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships. After that, it was back to training for the team. Their plan was to take the feedback from these two competitions and make further improvements and adjustments heading into the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2019. “We know that we want to be better at the emotional performance but there are a lot of the things that we need to assess just to make sure that our technical is a little bit cleaner and just more assured,” Poje pointed out. “Our levels are quite strong now so it’s improving the quality of the elements as well as our normal, emotional, speed, cleanliness of transitions so kind of everything really but I think it will be important for us to be very consistent over the next few weeks,” Weaver added.

“It’s nice to know we´re on the right track because it’s an unusual season. It was one that we decided to take into our own hands and we’re very happy that we could rely on ourselves and on our judgement to bring us to where we are now,” Kaitlyn said.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2018©International Skating Union (ISU)

The dancers feel that the World Championships came around very fast. “It’s crazy that it’s coming up again – it feels like we were just there in Milan. Andrew and I are at that point in our career where we’ve won everything; we’ve lost everything; we’ve been in every situation almost and when we started out on this season we said: ‘Let’s do what makes us feel good. Let’s skate to music that we like. Let’s do movement that feels right to us with, of course, our choreographers. Let’s trust ourselves for the first time in our career.’ And I think that that is a common thread through this season is that we want, at the end of the day, to be proud of ourselves and of our efforts and that, usually, puts us in the right ending position that we would hope to be: obviously we are competitors so we want to be standing on the podium,” Kaitlyn noted.

Weaver/Poje don’t want to commit to any long-term goals right now. “We just came off the Olympic cycle and we wanted to just take it year-by-year. We’ve always been a year-by-year team and we just want to make sure that we find that passion, that love every season that we are out there. We don’t know what the long term goal is but we know that our long term goal right now is to have a successful season which we’ll complete at the World Championships and then assess it from there and figure out what our next step is,” Andrew said. Obviously, he agrees that the ISU World Figure Skating Championships next year in Montréal, Canada, are a big incentive. “And there’s nothing in the books – Beijing [2020 Olympic Winter Games] is still there and we are still motivated with that,” he pointed out. “I feel like this season is a great testament to the fact that we’re improving. We continue to improve despite how many years we’ve been competing. I don’t feel like we have a limit it’s just based on what we feel and where we want to take our skating,” Kaitlyn added.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (CAN) at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating FRA 2017©International Skating Union (ISU)

However, right now Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje are focusing on the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2019 in Saitama (JPN) next week.