Emilea Zingas/Vadym Kolesnik: “We’re not at the top yet”

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik were the young ice dance shooting stars of the season. After making the ISU Grand Prix Final, winning the Four Continents and placing fifth at their first Olympic Winter Games, they skated off with bronze in what was their debut at the World Championships. After the World Championships they started working on their new Free Dance right away. We met the dancers at the Peak Ice training camp where they spent two weeks in Courmayeur.

That last season was really a big breakthrough for you and went beyond whatever you have probably dreamed or expected. Looking back, how do you reflect on that what happened last season?

Vadym: I think it was like a miracle on ice, because originally our goal was to medal at nationals and qualify for Olympics. But as the season was going, I realized, wait, there's potential to do more, and we want to do more, and that's how kind of we just kept pushing ourselves, kept pushing until we got to Worlds, and we were fourth after the Rhythm Dance. I was thinking, oh my God, we're so close to the podium. It might not happen this year, but it’s probably going to happen next year. But then, the stars aligned, and it was our lucky day. Igor [Shpilband, coach] told me that was my best skate ever. We're just really happy overall.

Emilea: It's a crazy thing to think back upon especially being here. Last year when we were here in Cormayeur, we were making the program with Benoît [Richaud, choreographer], starting training for the new season. To be honest, I was thinking we had a very slim chance to make the Olympic team. The US ice dance field is very deep and the Shibutanis had also announced their return just a few weeks prior to us coming here and I was feeling very defeated.  Benoît said to us, it doesn't matter what anybody else does, if you show up and you are 10 times more ready, 10 times more prepared and 10 times more trained than everybody, you have to be undeniable. They won't deny you the spot if you make yourselves undeniable. That's kind of what we did. There were moments last season when I thought, I can't do it. I'm so tired. I'm so dead. I don't think anything's going to come from all this work that we're doing. But then as soon as we had the medal at the Cup of China, I was like, Oh my God, it's all worth it. Even if it's just for this one medal, it's all worth it. It just kept building and building.  With each experience, I think we grew, our confidence also grew and we knew how to handle the pressure. And so we just did what we needed to do.