Winter Sports Don’t Stop in the Florida Sunshine

Me on your side. The night before we met, ice dancer Anton Spirit honored us. Teammates Madison Chalk and Evan Bates had just earned a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Milan. It was something of an upset, as Chalk and Bates had been expected to win the gold in ice dancing and our previous three time world champions. It didn't dampen spirit Donovan spirits. In fact, his enthusiasm for the sport and his fellow ice dancers, with whom he trains in Montreal, seemed boundless. This day he was helping out as coach and teacher for the students of his parents Valerie Spear Donovan, a former pair skater, and Elena Nina, a former ice dancer. Both were champion Russian skaters who now live in Fort Myers. My parents are wonderful coaches and they're very successful athletes and coaches, and I'm visiting them while I'm here. I always like to work with the kids that my parents have because they love having lessons with me, and I love working with them and with them. The very beginning experience of his 27. He was born in Kissimmee and is skated for the United States since 2020. He previously skated for Russia and Great Britain, but it's his American team status that makes him the most proud. Just wearing like one of these jackets with the American flag on it. It means so much you go into competition knowing that you represent this huge nation with such a long history of figure skating. It's definitely an honor. It's pure Donovan medals in international competition with former partner Lorraine McNamara. And then a couple of years ago, Spear Donovan held his first tryout with his most recent partner, Vanessa Pham, right here at the Fort Myers Stadium. Florida also figures into his plans for the future. Coaching is also a big part of me. It's something that I want to do in the future and definitely after my skating career. I do want to move to Florida and build an academy. That's, that's a dream. He also dreams of Olympic gold. To get there, he practices all types of dance and also runs before every practice in ice dance. We do ballet, we do hip hop. We have a rhythm dance. And it's a different kind of style and theme every year. So we have to be really proficient in whatever is required of us. So we do a lot of different dance, but also there's strength and conditioning. A lot of my, colleagues and teammates, they're like, why do you run every single day? And I will run a ten K before going to practice every day. It's like something that I love to do. It's not strictly part of my training regimen, but I believe it helps me. For WGCU news, this is Dayna Harpster with Amanda Inscore Whittamore.