By Matteo Morelli | Awards photo by Robin Ritoss
In their second season together, Noemi Maria Tali & Noah Lafornara are an Italian team that is achieving many important results. We caught up with them in Grenoble, France, where they took Italy back to the top of the Junior Grand Prix Final podium after 27 years. We talked about how they approach their work together and how their focus is not only on the rest of this season, but also on their future as senior skaters.
Noemi and Noah, it is lovely to have a chance to talk to you both. This is your first Grand Prix Final and you enter it having won gold medals from your assignments. How do you feel about it?
Noah Lafornara (NL): We are feeling good and very positive about it, but we are also trying to keep very focused, aiming to stay in the correct frame of mind when we are competing, not letting anything distract us and, when we are skating, focusing on every single step of what we have been doing. We have done a lot of work and we feel really confident.
Noemi Maria Tali (NT): Over the last few months we have been through injuries and illnesses but, thankfully, the last two weeks before coming here we have been able to pull it together and we got here having practiced well, so we feel ready.
NL: We have had a really rough two months coming here, but I actually think it has almost given us more confidence. We have done two competitions already where the best runs were in the competition, which normally is not ideal. We know we went to those competitions and we had sickness or an injury to deal with, but we were able to pull it through and put out good performances that we were proud of. I think it has added to our confidence coming here.
Did you arrive in Grenoble with a bit of pressure because you were the top qualifier from the junior Grand Prix season and favourite to win?
NT: As for me, definitely a little bit. But I don’t feel as much pressure as at the beginning of the season, because I felt very stressed at the first competition of the year at the Junior Grand Prix in Riga. But then, as we said, we tried to keep focused and not letting us be distracted by what happens on the outside. So, personally, I feel like I am managing pressure a lot better, compared to last year or a few competitions ago. There is still a little bit of it, but it is manageable.
You are still quite a fresh partnership!
NL: We have been together for about a year and a half, but it was a really good match from the start. We had similar ideas of what we wanted to do with our skating and what kind of team we wanted to be. We have had many talks together with our whole team in Italy and in the United States, with our parents and everyone else involved: we understand what we want to achieve and we know that we are going to have to sacrifice and work a lot to get there. I feel like that it has really shown in our results.
NT: We understood from the beginning that this was going to be a serious partnership and that we have to give it all to try to reach our potential.
How did you find each other?
NT: It was through our coaches, they worked together in the past and they both had a skater without a partner, so they called each other and proposed to do a try-out.
What are you current training locations?
NL: We train half of the year in Milan, Italy, and then the other half of the year in Connecticut, in the United States.
NT: We have two homes, we enjoy practicing in both places.
NL: Both places have equal but very different value. I feel that our ability to put that together is something that we are really appreciative for, because it is almost as if we get twice the advice we can. Some things that our coaches in Milan don’t see, our coaches in America will see, it will change something completely, and then we can go back to Milan and something else is there that they catch that wasn’t looked at before. We always feel like both places are super useful. I feel like it is an advantage that we actually have four (Valter Rizzo, Brunhilde Bianchi, Denis Petukhov, Melissa Gregory) different angles of skating, four different ideas that are all mixing together to shape us.
Despite of this being a new partnership, you are already achieving quite a lot. In your first competitive season last year, you immediately won some important medals and ended seventh at the World Junior Championship. Then this year you started on a high note, and hopefully it will continue that way. How are you approaching the rest of the season and working towards what you think could be achieved until the end of the year?
NT: For the rest of the season we are going to try to improve a few things here and there in the programs, but our focus is not on the end of this season. This season is important for next season, with the way we can improve ourselves and learn different technical elements, like holds, positions and lifts. The things we are going to learn in this next few months are more important for the next year than this year. We hope the whole season is going to be a success, but if it isn’t, it wouldn’t be such a big problem, because even though it may not be a complete success, in the meanwhile we have worked on the skills that we need.
NL: We are focused a lot on continuing to do our best and we are really looking forward to keep gaining the experience in competition, because with each competition we are getting more confident and we are learning how to think, how to focus and how to keep ourselves together, even if something isn’t going right. We are also using this season in preparation for next season. We know we have to make that jump to senior next year, so we are already putting in a lot of focus to not just improving ourselves for this season, but already for the next year.
It will be quite an important senior season to jump into.
NT: Yes, we are aware of that and there are a lot of chances. To think we haven’t worked to our limits to try to grab those opportunities that may coming would be a disservice to ourselves. We have nothing to lose, so we just give it all.
Do you have any skater you look up to for inspiration?
NT: Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov. They did maybe simpler things at times, because they skated a long time ago, but the way they approach every step and they presented themselves was almost beyond their time.
NL: I don’t think I have ever seen another team being able to project as much as them, and that is a big inspiration for us. We like to watch their programs and see how they presented them.
Are you doing anything else outside of skating?
NT: I am studying economy at university. They have in person classes but also do video lessons, so I can follow the lessons when I can, and when I am busy or tired and I cannot follow in person, the next day I can pick things up from the video lesson. I have done high school in person all my life, and I wanted to do something flexible to be able to take up all the skating opportunities we have.
What are you passionate about?
NT: I love dancing, which is very connected to skating. I like going out, clubbing!
NL: I guess my passion is fish. For my whole life, I have had a thing for the water and marine life, I would like to learn about that. When I finish skating, I want to go into studying marine biology and possibly coral reef rehabilitation, or something like that. It has been something I have dreamt about my whole life, other than skating.
Thank you for sharing so much about you and your partnership. Is there anything else you would like to add?
NL: We are grateful for all the support we get and we appreciate even just the opportunity to be able to compete in all these different places. I often think about all the places I am going to in the world: for example, we did a junior Grand Prix in Bangkok, Thailand. We really appreciate every opportunity that we get, and we want to continue enjoying all of the experiences and everything that we can take from this sport, including all the life experiences.
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