INTERNATIONAL skaters Kirsty Chick and Darren Dyke have been chosen for the 2007 World Champion-ships on the Gold Coast, Australia, in November. It will mean the couple working exceptionally hard over the coming months to enable them to improve on their 14th place last year.

Ideally, they would like to train more but, as Dyke explained, they are hampered by financial constraints.

‘On average, we are training five hours a week which, in comparison with our rival competitors, is about a third of the time,’ he said.

‘We can only bring over our UK coach once a month. On top of that Kirsty and I do two early-morning training sessions.’

That means up with the lark and skating around a deserted Beau Sejour sports hall at seven before heading off for a day’s work.

It is not easy, said Dyke, nor cheap.

‘I’ve been looking at the cost of flights and it’s £1,000 each to get there.’

Their selection followed a fine ninth-place finish at the senior European Championships held in Gujan-Mestras, France.

Being ranked the third British couple this year, the Guernsey duo had a lot to prove and although the hot weather caused problems with the condition of the floor, Chick and Dyke trained with confidence and utilised all the time available to bring themselves up to competition standard with the assistance of their UK coach Jocelyn Taylor.

Following the opening ceremony, the couple were straight into competition with the compulsory dance section which comprised the paso doble and Westminster waltz.

With a favourable draw of seventh to skate, the Sarnians gave the real flavour of the paso doble and found themselves scoring well.

The Westminster waltz proved to be a little more difficult for them, due mainly to the floor size being skated on, and the patterns and edges of the dance were not executed as strongly and pronouncedly as did their competitors.

Although a little disappointed at the marks received, it was sufficient to place them around eighth place at that stage.

With a further two days’ training to follow, this gave the opportunity to polish up on their original dance routine which this year required the teams to choreograph a routine comprising the quickstep and foxtrot rhythms.

This suited them and with their lively and rhythmic performance three judges placed them in eighth and they moved to overall ninth, ahead of the second-ranked British pair. They held this placing after the final discipline, the freedance, which was skated to Swan Lake.