Squamish’s Raye Ryan returned from Germany last month with a little extra weight in her luggage.
Ryan grabbed a silver in the adult free skate Class 4 competition at the ISU Adult Figure Skating Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany in May and also picked up a fourth-place finish in the Class 4 artistic competition.
She said she knew almost immediately that it was a special run on the ice.
“As I was taking my bows and getting off the ice, I was thinking that even if I came in last, I was still satisfied with that skate,” she said. “I put it all out there and it all came together amazingly.”
Ryan’s free skate lasted one minute, 40 secons and was performed to a piece from the movie Stardust. Her final score was a personal best and was only a fraction of a point behind the gold medal winner, who hails from Finland.
This year marked a decade of competition in Germany for the event and more than 300 skaters from 25 countries competed. The year 2014 also marked the 10th year that Ryan has skated competitively.
“It’s something I’d always wanted to do and when my granddaughter wanted to take skating lessons in kindergarten, I signed up. Why not?” she said.
She represents the Squamish Skating Club (SSC) and now skates three to four days a week. Ryan works with SSC coach Kari-Ann MacDonald, as well as coaches in Burnaby, and she trains on a synchro figure skating team once a week in Surrey.
“An axel is still in my future,” she said, laughing.
Next up for Ryan, a Squamish resident of 31 years, is the 2015 Pacific Coast Sectional Championships in Las Vegas next March.
