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This section highlights featured skaters, whether Xtreme Ice Skaters or other disciplines (freestyle, figure, dance, etc..).
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Current Featured Skater:
Nathan W. – Watch video of Nathan
– Nathan is an Xtreme Ice Skater from England and skates at Blackburn ice rink. Nathan is both a leader on the ice and a leader in our sport. Nathan is the chairman of Board of Directors and spokesperson for our sport in England.
Alex Wilde – Watch video of Alex Wilde
– Alex is a competitive figure skater living in England. Alex has a creative, energetic, and powerful style of skating. Alex is a phenomenal skater and is an inspiration to Dan Perceval.
Alex
theres a few moves I love in this, one is the 720 with arms out – similar to a christ air in skateboarding! The half pike jump into the sit spin and also the aerial type thing when he jumps into the air and almost flips and his legs go over the top!!
The Christ Spin is cool and could possibly be adapted as an Xtreme Ice Skating move. But most of the rest of Alex’s stuff is figure skating. Although, if you look at his style, he takes figure skating and brings it closer to Xtreme than to Figure because of his power, speed, agility and creativity.
yeah there are a few very impressive moves in this video all of which look great and as you say are very powerful moves and could be forgiven for being more xtreme than figure haha! that aerial type cartwheel thing is amazing….god knows how you would practice that other than off ice…however off ice you can sort of split your feet on the take off and grip better to get the power behind it…whats you opinion dan?
I’m not sure what move you are talking about. Are you referring to the Boot Loop? Or are you talking about the Christ Spin?
not the christ spin, i presume its the boot loop – sort of looks like a cartwheel without any hands?
Oh, that’s not the Boot Loop. I don’t know what that trick is called, but it’s figure skating.
There is much danger with using figure skating moves in our sport; and freestyle too. Perhaps I should have kept the Drunken’ Sailor out of the sport, and some other moves too lol. I think it will be alright if we kept current tricks the way they are, but we shouldn’t add new tricks to the sport from figure skating or freestyle unless there’s an absolute need to, such as the “3-Turn” which was recently added.
What Alex was doing during the video was figure skating, even though more than half of his moves were not really figure skating moves. The reason is, is because of perception. People perceive Alex to be a figure skater, unless he changed his message and approach. For us, we need to continue to adapt people to a way of thinking that is perceived as Xtreme. That’s why freestyle will always be freestyle and not Xtreme. It’s because freestyle is not perceived as Xtreme, no matter what skaters may say about their own skills and “how they can do all of our tricks and better”. The idea is to convince the broader public to OUR way of thinking. This is hands down branding, at it’s purest. I’ve been doing it for over 4 years now.
yeah they are figure moves but still look darn cool haha! Some of them simply being done in hockey skates would look really cool and I for one would be amazed if i saw someone do the cartwheel without hands thing whether on hockey skates or figures even if it was performed identically haha! Regardless of style – great skating!