Townsman, 1992-01, Page 8through a few good arguments."
The key going into these Olympics
is keeping a competitive edge. "We
have to be very crisp and right on",
Eisler says. He and Isabelle still train
four hours at the rink and another two
at the gym every day but they also
spend a lot of time doing what
coaches and parents would have been
doing for them a dozen years ago. "At
this level you're supposed to be able
to do everything well but now the
quality has to be there," Eisler says.
"You have to spend time on the little
things — the artistry of the program,
the music, making sure the outfits go
with the music, making sure you have
good quality music. The free skatc
portion of the program that Isabelle
and Lloyd won this year's Canadian
title with, and will also skate at the
Olympics, is an extremely athletic dis-
play of lifts and throws, done in some
cye catching outfits. Artistically
speaking it was all choreographed and
designed with birds and flying fish in
mind. Parts of the music they skate to
comes from the score of the movie A
Fish Called Wanda. In October
Isabelle and Lloyd went as far as to
work with Canadian world solo syn-
chronized swimming champion Sylvie
Frechette in the pool to learn how to
simulate the fluid motion of limbs in
water. Choreographer Uschi Kezler
helped bring these ideas to fruition, as
did coach Picard, who urged them to
combine fish and bird motifs.
"I thought they should try to skate
to music that has something to do
with birds," Picard says. "I wanted
Lloyd to be a bird of some kind,
because to me, he's got long arms, and
they're very fluid, and we've never
really used them that much."
Lloyd Sr. spent 23 hours driving
through the heart of this winter's worst
snowstorm to watch his son compete
at the Canadian championship in Jan-
uary. But soar was something Herbie
and Isabelle didn't exactly do in front
of dad and everybody else during their
opening compulsories. They fell
twice. His parents says Lloyd is basi-
cally uncommunicative towards
everybody, including them, at the best
of times when a competition is under-
way . But this was even worse. Dad
says he was in a bad mood, borderline
6 TOWNSMAN/JANUARY-FEBRUARY
ugly.
"Isabelle fell on a jump and this is
natural, sometimes you fall on those
things because they are very diffi-
cult," says Lloyd. "The second fall on
a spin was completely by surprise,
we've never fallen on it and I'm sure
we'll never fall on it again. So it really
took us back ... especially me because
it was basically my fault. So then we
had to sit down and decide why we
were at the national championships
and what our goal was when we left ...
just to make the Olympics and be our
best when we got there. But we also
didn't expect to be at our worst during
the short program of the Nationals."
But rebound the pair did in the free
skate portion of their program, over-
taking Doug Ladret and Christine
Hough, in what one expert analyst
described as "a routine so packed with
difficult elements that a fall on a dou-
ble Exel hindered them little. And
they earned their first perfect mark of
6.0 for the artistic content of their
long program." While responding to
the standing ovation of the crowd and
picking up the traditional roses
thrown on the ice, Herbie also picked
up a cowboy hat thrown on the ice by
his father. It's a hat that has been
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