ADVENTURES ON ICE
Our adventures
Meet Canterbury’s surprising seniors’ ice- skating club
Anyone could be forgiven for wistfully glancing at figure skaters gliding around an ice rink and thinking, “Oh, there’s no way I could ever do that!”
But meet two Cantabrians who might just change your mind. Jeanne Begej and John Gilmour are part of a club that shows anyone can get on the ice and age is no barrier!
If you head along to the Canterbury Masters Figure Skating Club on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Alpine Ice, you’ll find a range of different people lacing up their boots and hitting the ice.
Jeanne is the woman to thank for that. She’s been skating since she was a teenager and amazingly, at the age of 70, she still skates weekly!
“I went with a bible class group up to Lake Lyndon when I was about 13,” Jeanne recalls of her first experience on the ice. “I'd never ice skated before, so I borrowed another girl’s skates, put them on and off I went! I just zoomed across the lake – I’m glad there was no health and safety restrictions in those days!” she laughs.
That was the beginning of her “love affair” with ice skating. Jeanne even met her late husband Joe, an icehockey player, at the rink. She has competed across New Zealand as well as being involved in national committees and judging other figure skaters.
But having found herself reaching the limits of the competitive scene as a young adult, Jeanne was at a loss of what to do.
“There wasn’t a whole lot out there for adults,” she says explaining how she spent the next decade skating for fun.
“So in about 2003, I started up the Masters Club – there was a gap in the market so to speak for adult skating.”
She’s been joined over the years by a wide variety of people with a club membership of about 140, even the club’s 83-year-old treasurer was skating up until a few years ago, she says.
“I don’t feel old at all skating, you can’t feel old! We’ve got members all the way into their eighties,” she says. “Everyone just does it for the love of the sport. You don’t have to be great, you just have to get out there and strut your stuff.”
John (53) is one of those members who started later in life and had absolutely no background in figure skating.
“I’ve always been quite physical, I played a lot of football, but after you’ve done your ankle in for the 10th time, you start looking for something else,” he jokes.
“I started skating when I was 49. I’d been about once a year beforehand and gone to the public sessions. At one of the sessions, I was watching people in the middle doing the spins and jumps, yet here I was basically walking around the edge holding onto the barrier. And I’m pretty competitive, so I thought, ‘I want to do that!’”
The software engineer signed himself up for group lessons before gaining the confidence to get private lessons. He’s now even taken part in a few competitions where spectators have got a glimpse of the Scotsman
CANTABRIANS JEANNE AND JOHN HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT
doing a routine in a kilt.
“I’m probably one of the more nervous ones – I was petrified. But then it starts, you get into routine and you forget about everything. Although my first competition, I did actually forget everything,” he laughs, “but I kept going!”
He can even do a few jumps, he says proudly. “It’s not a matter of if you fall, but when you fall. I definitely have a good appreciation for it now!”
Jeanne agrees that it isn’t an easy sport and a few falls are to be expected. But she says it’s all worth it for that feeling you get when gliding along the ice.
“You get on the ice and everything melts away. That’s probably what I felt when I hit the ice on the lake for the first time, freedom.”
Jeanne’s quick to point out she’s nowhere near the Winter Olympic superstars, although, “I can still spin and do little jumps! I used to have an excellent sit spin but my knees haven’t held up over time,” she giggles.
But as part of the club’s synchronised adult skating team, Spectrum, she can still be found gliding and weaving her way across the ice to Queen or Whitney Houston with the ease of a seasoned skater.
“For me, as soon as I get on the ice, I feel surrounded by grace and beauty.”
‘ You don’t have to be great, you just have to get out there and strut your stuff’