This is the first post in a series discussing each of this year’s Dancing on Ice Contestants. First up, Lisa George.
Much has been made in some quarters of Coronation Street actress and current DOI contestant Lisa George’s alleged advantage from having competed in a handful of skating competitions as a 9 year old.
If you’ve read the homepage, you’ll know I received my first roller-skates way back on Christmas Day 1987. I was only two and a half years old, but pretty much my first memory is of popping the yellow, orange and blue Fisher Price skates on over my socks (I soon learnt you were meant to wear them over shoes) and toddling around the dining room table. For the next sixteen years I lived on wheels. I can even remember at thirteen giving a presentation in English class about my skating obsession and how I was devastated after a knee injury aged nine, when the doctor banned me from skating for a month.17 years after my last pair of skates, I can still visualise every pair I’ve ever owned.
My parents got rid of my last pair during a clear out whilst I was a fresher. In April last year, I saw an advert for an adults-only roller disco and immediately bought tickets for my best friend’s birthday. For days beforehand the thought of being back on skates filled me with joy. I had visions of myself spiralling away to my heart’s content. In reality, we left early after my friend was knocked over exiting the rink, badly bruising her coccyx and though I was in no danger of falling over I couldn’t even remember how to skate backwards let alone attempt any fancy tricks. A forward figure of 8 was as close as it got. I loved every minute but it was a definite reminder that skating is certainly not like riding a bike or learning an instrument. While over the course of my childhood I must have spent at least 14,000 hours skating the subsequent 149,000 hours not skating had certainly taken their toll, erasing any ‘advantage’.
So to Lisa, who summed up her ice-skating history as “I did it for a couple of years until I was 9”. Assuming therefore she began at around 7 years of age, almost three times as old I was in 1987 and stopped at lot sooner than my sixteen years.
However, whilst I chose to stop skating, not bothering to take my skates to hilly Durham, Lisa’s ‘career’ was cut short due to a nasty and doubtless at the time rather traumatic injury. “I was in a competition and I stuck my blades in the ice, the ice shot up like a shard and cut my chin open”. I have clear memories of having a nose bleed in the swimming pool as a youngster after running up an inflatable as my friend Jonny slid down. The resulting mix of blood and water were like a scene from Jaws. I doubt the sight of blood dripping on to the ice was any less disturbing. Not only that, but if you watched this Lisa’s segment on this season’s Christmas special, some slightly cruel DOI executive decided that after almost forty years (350,400 hours) since last setting foot on the ice, Lisa should do so on the very same rink! Childhood memories are potent stuff. Just think how many former colleagues you struggle to name and then compare that to how many former classmates you remember vividly.
Whilst Lisa did come joint second in week one (4 points behind Perri Kiely whose apparent advantage as a dancer I’ll explore in a later post), she did so alongside Libby Clegg who aside from being neither a skater nor a dancer has close to zero useful sight. What’s her advantage?
While the story of the former child skater returning to the ice in a blaze of glory is a romantic one, and I am relishing the chance to see Lisa unleash her potential and rediscovering her love for the sport, let’s not pretend they’ve snuck Nancy Kerrigan in there!
White Skates 