My First Axel

嘉嘉芝士

“Thud”. My blades hit the ground as I finished one and a half rotations. “Yes!” I screamed as I punched my hands upward in celebration. “Yes! I landed my axel!”. I almost fell over, basking in the accomplishment. This was the result of years of hard work and sacrifice.

Thinking back to the first days of me waddling on ice and falling every 10 meters. I felt proud of myself for finally breaking through in skating. At the very beginning, I was struggling to even stand up properly, but I progressed through the “nightmare” crossovers, the “woozy” spins, and there came the waltz jump. I struggled endlessly on my way of learning my first skating jump and fell way too much, always ending up sprawled on the floor, and almost fracturing my tailbone countless times. After that, I struggled with every other jump on the list, the salchow, the toe loop, the loop, the flip, the lutz, falling and failing tens of millions of times just to try to perfect each jump and prepare for the axel. I even wiped out doing backspins in the most awkward positions. The axel, commonly acknowledged as the most difficult figure skating jump out of the six, has an extra half a rotation due to the fact that it is the only jump that takes off forward. That means that it has one and a half rotations in the air, and that means that it is the first jump where you need to learn how to rotate in the air. As I prepared for my axel off ice, I was more determined than ever to prove that I could do it.

Then came the time when it was finally time to attempt my axel on ice. I failed attempt after attempt with a tilted axis, a bad takeoff, and everything that could go wrong went wrong in each and every attempt. I was failing more than I’ve ever failed before, but I climbed back up on my feet each and every time. I was determined to land this axel jump no matter what. I trained harder than ever, built up leg strength, trained to spin faster in the air while fighting centrifugal force trying to tear me apart, tried to lose weight, literally doing everything that might help me land my axel.

One typical day of me jumping and falling endlessly while doing axels, one of them went terribly wrong. I forgot to kick out, so my axis was tilted very badly. I landed straight on my ankle, and I twisted it. It felt like I was so close to my axel, yet being set back just because of one wrong move. “Welcome to the world of sports.” The doctor said. During the recovery, I kept thinking and dreaming of the day when I would finally be able to land my axel.

Finally, that day came. I jumped axel after axel, in hopes of landing one. Suddenly, something touched my blade. The ice! I quickly shifted to the landing position, extending my free leg in a graceful manner, and landed my first ever axel.