{"id":10545,"date":"2017-12-28T21:48:40","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T02:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/?p=10545"},"modified":"2018-01-30T19:37:18","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T00:37:18","slug":"madison-hubbell-and-zachary-donohue-set-sights-on-first-u-s-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/2017\/12\/28\/madison-hubbell-and-zachary-donohue-set-sights-on-first-u-s-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue set sights on first U.S. title"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maura Sullivan Hill, staff writer
\nPhoto by Robin Ritoss for Ice-Dance.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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For the past three years, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue have been the bronze medalists in the ice dance event at the U.S. Championships.<\/span><\/p>\n

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They finished third in the short dance at Worlds in 2017 before a disastrous fall on a twizzle by Donohue in the free dance took them out of the medals.<\/span><\/p>\n

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They have qualified for the Grand Prix Final three years in a row, but missed the podium by less than a point in December.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This year, Hubbell and Donohue have had it with \u201calmost.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not here to get third place for the fifth time at Nationals, that\u2019s not an option,\u201d Donohue told reporters in a U.S. Figure Skating media call on December 28.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cUltimately, our goal is to skate our best at the national championships and go into our first Olympic Games very strong and end up on the podium,\u201d Hubbell said. \u201cWe think that the changes we\u2019ve made going into this national championships set us up well to compete against these two other teams [Maia and Alex Shibutani and Madison Chock and Evan Bates].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Since their last outing at the Grand Prix Final in early December, Hubbell and Donohue have made some changes to their short dance.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cAt the beginning of the season, we decided to make this bold move of having our non-touching midline step transition directly into our rhumba, which maybe was a bit risky in some ways. We thought it was really cool and initially got a great reaction, but at the end of the day, there was nothing that the judges could give us in extra GOE [grade of execution] for connecting those two elements and it was hard physically,\u201d Hubbell said. \u201cSo we decided that we would make a connection between, so we know we have a little more ice coverage in the midline step. We wanted to show more flow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Throughout both programs, they are working on transitions that highlight their strengths. \u201cWe want to maximize that we are a bigger team than our competitors. We have more speed and longer lines,\u201d Hubbell said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Their goal is the top step of the podium, and their plan to get there is by skating clean programs. An error on a lift was the difference between their fourth place finish and a bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final, and small mistakes making a huge impact is the story of any ice dance event. Donohue said that they are focused on \u201cperforming clean programs to the best of our capability.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cFor us, it\u2019s always a mental thing. We have a strength of really loving the spotlight, but with that comfort level, we\u2019ve noticed that we can get a little too excited and a little too caught up in the moment,\u201d Hubbell said. \u201cI don\u2019t think, most of the time, when we make a mistake it\u2019s that we are nervous, but that the arena and the audience are giving us so much energy\u2026we get ahead of ourselves. We\u2019re working on skating with a lot of precision and managing our energy levels, trying to find a way to skate at our max performance while we are still present in the moment, so that those little things that are inevitably off don\u2019t take us by surprise, the program doesn\u2019t unravel. We are able to control everything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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This focus and attention to detail comes straight from their coaches, Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Haguenauer in Montreal, where they\u2019ve been based since the spring of 2015. Hubbell and Donohue skate there alongside the two most recent world champions, Canada\u2019s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir and France\u2019s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron. Donohue said that they have never trained harder in their lives than they do now.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re in a very positive environment where everyone pushes each other, and we have a team of coaches that works together seamlessly and selflessly,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no ego involved in the work. It is enjoyable for us to push ourselves and for our coaches to push us. We\u2019re not afraid to go out on a limb and we really have a full opportunity to live and learn while we\u2019re training here. Our partnership has improved, our communication has improved. We get on the ice and apply ourselves to what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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This season, they\u2019ve applied themselves to winning that first national title in San Jose, and they\u2019ll put it all out on the ice when competition kicks off with the short dance on Jan. 5 and concludes with the free dance on Jan. 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Editor\u2019s Note: Figure Skaters Online\u2019s\u00a0Gina Capellazzi<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and Claire Cloutier, along with photographer\u00a0Leah Adams<\/a><\/span>, will be in San Jose for the U.S. Championships. Follow Figure Skaters Online on Twitter (@fsonline), Facebook (www.facebook.com\/fsonline), Instagram (https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/figureskatersonline\/) and on our website, www.figureskatersonline.com for coverage beginning January 2.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maura Sullivan Hill, staff writer Photo by Robin Ritoss for Ice-Dance.com   For the past three years, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue have been the bronze medalists in the ice dance event at the U.S. Championships.   They finished third in the short dance at Worlds in 2017 before a disastrous fall on a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10557,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions\/10557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}