Filipinos can excel in figure skating — Shibutani siblings

IF THERE’S a sport where Filipinos have the potential to succeed in the future, figure skating is such a discipline.

Winter Olympics figure skating medalists Maia and Alex Shibutani and two-time Olympian Michael Martinez all agree Filipinos have the quality to excel in the sport despite the sport being a little challenging considering the Philippines is a tropical country.

“There’s so many things that can bring people to figure skating, if you love music, dance, choreography, storytelling, and I know those are all things from all my conversations while I’ve been here in Manila that Filipinos really love, so it has a great future in this country and we’re excited to help it grow,” said Alex (Shibutani) during Tuesday’s personal training sessions with a group of skaters and coaches at the MOA Skating Rink.

Mr. Martinez agreed.

“Hopefully, Filipinos wouldn’t restrict ourselves to summer sports because we could actually excel in winter sports and try figure skating,” said the former Asian champion and veteran of the 2014 Sochi and 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games who is now juggling coaching and competing for almost a decade now.

For Maia (Shibutani), the most important thing is to have desire.

“If you want to try the sport, please come out and try it. I think experiencing it and having that spark of interest is a good beginning,” she said.

The Shibutani siblings and Mr. Martinez, along with celebrity figure skater Skye Chua, were in the country promoting not just figure skating but also ice dancing, courtesy of the United States Embassy and in cooperation with SM Supermalls.

Their arrival came just weeks after the country had started to show interest in winter sports following the breakthrough gold medal captured by the Philippine men’s curling team in the Asian Winter Games in Harbin, China.

Also, figure skaters Isabella Gamez and Russian-born naturalized Filipino Aleksandr Korovin finished a strong fourth in Harbin. — Joey Villar