Gluing thousands of sequins worth it for ice success
PROUD mum Maeve Kerr watches her son John and daughter Sinead on television for the first time, gliding effortlessly over the ice whilst performing an array of breathtaking lifts, leaps and spins.
It's 2003, and a clip of the brother and sister ice-dancing duo performing in the European Figure Skating Championships has just been shown on Eurosport.
However, it's not just the siblings' twists and turns on the ice that Maeve is admiring – she's also impressed with her own handiwork. The mother-of-three has painstakingly glued 1,700 crystals on to the dress Sinead is wearing – a flimsy wisp of yellow fabric – using 30 tubes of Super Glue.
It was the first of scores of outfits that the retired nurse decorated from the conservatory of her home in Livingston.
It's this kind of family dedication and support that has helped Olympic hopefuls John and Sinead – the most successful ice dancers of their generation in the country – to come so far.
The pair will fly the British flag at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, with their opening event in Compulsory Dance on Saturday at 12:45am (GMT), hoping to improve on their showing in the 2006 Games in Turin when they came tenth.
Maeve laughs: "I go through so much Super Glue, it costs me a fortune. I get it from Homebase and the staff must wonder what I do with it all.
"The last dress I decorated for Sinead was white and I put 5,500 Swarovski stones on it – it took me two-and-a-half-months. I have to stop after so many hours of doing it because I get a headache."
Sinead, 31, has been ice skating since she was just nine-years-old, with John, now 29, following in his sister's footsteps shortly after.
The pair trained as solo skaters, travelling to competitions across the country before joining together in January 1999.
Within six months they won silver in the British Figure Skating Championships, thanks to the endless hours spent practising at Murrayfield Ice Rink.
Maeve, who is originally from Kilkenny, adds: "When Sinead was about 14, they started training with a coach from Ayr twice a week after school, so we would have to drive them to Ayr and back.
"Two years later, they started training at a rink in East Kilbride for five years.
"John would still train at Murrayfield before school at 6:30am, so we'd be up at half five."
Husband Alastair, 54, a GP at Whitburn Surgery, jokes: "If we had known at the beginning that it was going to be a 20-year sentence, it might have given one pause for thought. But it's all been worthwhile."
The Kerrs' living room is covered with photographs of John and Sinead performing on the ice, while a selection of their medals hangs from a light on the wall.
Two large silver trophies have John and Sinead's names inscribed on them no less than seven times. It marks their seventh straight victory in the British Figure Skating Championships, beating the record set by the legendary Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who won the championships seven times but not consecutively.
Maeve and Alastair admit to having spent "thousands and thousands" of pounds to help John and Sinead in their sport, with one pair of skating boots costing 500.
"It is a very expensive sport," Maeve adds. "The outfits cost about 100 each at the time, and they've probably had about 100 of them altogether over the years.
"If you recognise as a parent that your child has that something that makes them tick, then you should support it," Maeve says. "That's the parent's role."
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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