Dario Betti: “I am ready to challenge myself”

Yesterday the reigning World Champion Dario Betti held a press conference at the Agorà ice rink in Milan, to make official his switch from roller skating to ice skating.
Dario was born on July 13th in1991 in Perugia, and at 16 he moved to Rome to pursue a career as an elite roller skater. After winning for two times in a row both the European and World titles (in 2011 and 2012), Dario started to think of his future: “Roller skating is not an Olympic sport, and a gold medal at the World Championships is the highest result you can achieve. As I have now won it, I wanted to pursue new goals.”

After winning the World Championships in Auckland and the Grand Prix in January in Florence, in February he started to train with Lucia Civardi, who has coached many athletes during their switch from roller skating to ice skating.
Besides Lucia, Dario is helped by Corrado Giordani for ballet, Barbara Riboldi for choreography and Mirko Botta for off-ice conditioning. “I am going to train in Courchevel for a month, and in Agorà during the rest of the summer”, the skater explained.

The first days on the ice, Dario told us, have been quite traumatic: “I was aware of the technical difficulties, especially because the blade is a completely new tool for me. The jumps and spins technique is different, but the main difference is in the basic skating and gliding, which is what I am mainly working on now. The muscles are stimulated in a different way, in fact at the beginning I struggled to be in good shape. I am able to execute all the triple jumps, and I am now working on the Flip and Toeloop combinations, on the triple Axel and on the quad Toeloop".

Dario's goals are the Olympic Games in 2018: “Of course I want to thank the roller skating world, because if I am here now it's thanks to my past, to all the people who have helped me to grow and get where I am now. With roller skating I have already achieved the highest results, and a big flaw of this sport is its absence at the Olympic Games. Anyway, I don't want to be labelled as the roller skater that has switched to ice skating, I want to start from scratch, without my roller skating past influencing my ice skating career.”

This is the third time a roller skater switches to ice skating: "Those are names and champions that roller skating is losing, and in my opinion this should make one think, then maybe something could change into this sport. There's the need to look for new paths for roller skating. We have a good starting point: it's a popular sport, and you can play it everywhere...”

Concerning his competitive programs, Dario Betti has started to work on his Long Program one week ago. It will be the same he had during his last season as a roller skater: Napoleon. “I really wanted to bring on the ice this character”. The Short Program will be a tango; Dario and his coach started its choreography yesterday.

Dario began to watch figure skating competitions a few years ago, and last year he had the chance to see them live in Nice, as the reigning World Roller Champion. There he also had the opportunity to meet Patrick Chan, also reigning World Champion, who is Dario's role model. “In my opinion he is the most complete skater now, both under the technical and artistic point of view; moreover he is a very down-to-earth guy.”
“In Nice I was asked whether I wanted to pursue a career as a figure skater, and my answer was no. Maybe I didn't feel ready to throw myself headlong into this new adventure, I wanted to give everything I had to roller skating. As soon as I was able to do it, though, I said: why not?”.

The same day the press conference took place, Dario's switch to figure skating has been made official, the FISG (Italian Ice Sports Federation) will later examine the athlete's training, and the technical commission will then state its opinion about Dario.
“This season I will surely compete at the National Championships; in a few weeks we will plan my whole competition schedule. Anyway I want to compete quite early in the season, in order to gain as much experience as possible. This is going to be my first year on the ice, I have nothing to lose and I only want to show what I am able to do.”

Laura Sciarrillo