Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Speedster bound for German skating town
She’s already a champion speed skater in her patch of the world, but a Marlborough teenager will soon be taking on Europe.
Erin Green achieved a clean sweep at the 2023 Oceania speed skating championships in Brisbane, winning every junior ladies event she entered.
“That was very, very much a highlight of last year ... it was really good racing,” Green said.
And the 18-year-old is now preparing to swap Blenheim for Germany for a couple of months, to train and race with a club in a town that was “pretty much based around speed skating”.
“The lady that owns the track owns pretty much the whole town, so she has houses and things for the skaters. That’s pretty cool,” Green said.
Green had already briefly visited and trained in the town, about an hour’s drive from the Swiss border, last year. This time around, she will be part of a development team, training with them and travelling to competitions with them.
“I did skate for the team that I’m going to skate for this year just before Worlds, so I kind of have a rough idea of everything.”
Speed skating was “quite big” in Germany, because Green said a lot of people who ice skated in winter swapped the ice skates for wheels to keep fit in the off-season, so “inline is definitely quite big because of the ice I think, with the Olympics and all of that.”
Having the chance to skate in Europe was a good opportunity to prepare for international events, because Green said there were many more competitors on the tracks compared to back home.
“There’s definitely some better competition over there in terms of like amounts of people in the races,” she said.
“It definitely makes you a bit more aware of everyone, and that’s kind of what we miss over here in New Zealand, is that really close bunch racing that we don’t get to prepare for like before Worlds.”
Training hard during the past few months, she hoped to “peak” later in the year to give herself the best chance at the 2024 World Skate Games being held in Italy in September.
Green’s best placing at the last Worlds put her just outside the top 20, but she was feeling confident about her chances in Italy.
“I’m actually feeling really good at the moment, feeling strong, and ... all of this Europe stuff will definitely help,” she said.
And she was already a winner this year, winning multiple gold medals at NZ Road and Flat Track Championships held on home turf in Blenheim in January, and coming first in the junior ladies division at the Banked Track Championships in Hamilton at the beginning of last month.