MARK ETHERIDGE: Six-year-old ice skater has her eyes set on Olympic stardom

It would hardly be surprising if Alexia Easom is someday soon given the nickname Axel. The aspiring young wannabe Olympic ice skater is head over heels in love with ice skating and has been competing for more than half her life.

She’s only about to turn seven — take some time to let that sink in. Based in Cape Town, she already has a string of victories to boast about. She won her first competition two weeks after her fourth birthday when she grabbed gold at the Western Province interclub championships (under-5 section) at Grand West Arena.

And if it weren’t for the Covid-19 pandemic she would probably have a whole lot more medals. It was just after that gold medal that the first hard lockdown hit and her career was “put on ice” for roughly a year.

She is the youngest skater in SA history to pass the tough International Skating Union (ISU) skills test, two weeks short of her sixth birthday, and she went on to become the youngest ever competitor in the juveniles section at the SA Inter-Provincial Championships in Gauteng, a week after her sixth birthday.

“She’s incredibly dedicated and totally self-driven, especially from a young age,” says her dad Gareth. “We’ve taken the choice that my wife Kerryn home-schools her this year to give her more time to get to the ice rink for training at Grand West.

“This means that Alexia’s able to get up at 5am to be at the rink and train before the public is allowed access to the ice and then be back home for schooling during the day. Kerryn and I dovetail with raising our three children.”

A member of the Junior Blades Ice Skating Club, her dedication has earned her three weeks at the ISU’s Centre of Excellence in Bergamo, Italy, in 2022 where they all had their eyes well and truly opened.

“The facilities at their disposal were amazing … they’ve got such a head start,” said Gareth. “In Europe the rinks are open at least six hours a day for training, gyms are available, competitions are close and frequent. Living in SA, we have so far to travel on limited funding. Figure skating is barely a blip on the SA sporting radar.

“If Alexia needs to travel, she obviously needs to be accompanied as she’s a minor and then her coach’s transport [and financial compensation for the time she’s away] also has to be paid for.”

Coached by Barbie Hawkes, Alexia’s ice-skating idol is the coach’s daughter Ella. Alexia hooked up with Hawkes just after the pandemic started in March 2020.

Says dad Gareth: “I asked Barbie how to help her get better, not necessarily get to the Olympics, but she cut me off midsentence and said, ‘Why not the Olympics? She has enormous potential and can go very far’.”

It’s very much a team effort as well. Apart from Hawkes, herself a six-time national champion, Alexia has assistant coach Vage Evetts, group coach Tiana Stanton, Ballet For Ice coach Stanislav Tachalov, fitness coach Caryn Lotter and ballet teacher Caroline Kotse. Literally a coach for every year of her young life.

Alexia has her eyes set on the big prize: to get overseas and skate for SA, and hopefully at the Winter Olympics. To get there she puts in the hard yards, training 30 hours spread over six days a week — 15 on the ice and the rest doing ballet and fitness training.

“There’s a lot on her shoulders because she’s so young, but that’s how it is in this sport … in countries like Russia, 10-year-old kids already pretty much know whether they’re going to the Olympics or not.”

She was the youngest kid at the training camp in Bergamo and when one of the international coaches realised she was only six, they rushed to make the exercises easier, despite her coping so well.

Earlier in February she obtained an ISU international score, making her eligible to compete internationally in any competition for children 10 years old and younger. Once again she was the youngest ever SA skater to reach this status.

Next up, apart from the WP championships next week, will be another bash in Bergamo in April where she will be part of a 13-strong group of SA skaters at an ISU African development camp.

“We want to show the world that Africans can skate,” says Easom senior. “At the last Winter Olympics there were only six African competitors and we haven’t had a SA figure skater at the Winter Olympics for many a year now.”

The last SA figure skater at a Winter Olympics was Shirene Human at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan.

Discipline is already instilled in young Alexia and she is more than content to have takeaway meals as a treat only once a month and happily chooses plain water over fizzy cooldrinks “because I’m an athlete”.

Another example of her dedication is that the national champs are coming up in March, but a critical phase of preparation coincides with an ice-hockey event at Grand West. However, the rink owners are prepared to give figure skaters a training window — between 11pm and 1am!

“She jumped at the opportunity, which just goes to show the efforts she’s prepared to go to,” Gareth said. 

Easom senior is well aware of the pushy-parent syndrome and takes it into account almost daily. “As long as she’s having fun and showing potential we’ll pour as much as we can into her dream … if she stops showing potential or interest, we’ll back off. She’s still very young and we’ll give her every resource to fulfil her dreams.

“Basically our philosophy is we don’t want her to get to her 20s one day and wonder, ‘What if I’d given it more?’ or ‘What if I hadn’t taken this shot?’”

As for little Alexia’s thoughts on the difficulty of her sport? “An axel is the hardest thing I’ve had to learn because I have to go around more than once in the air and land on one foot.

“I love the dressing up for competition, but not so much the make-up. My rainbow dress is my absolute favourite dress, I’ve had it for a while now, but it’s still the best. I also love the exercises, especially the plank. I think I could do a plank all day sometimes.”

She says she’d like to dabble in swimming or hockey if she didn't have figure skating. “I really love swimming and just think hockey is a great sport.”

Many years from now, when figure skating may not feature as highly in her thoughts, she says she’d like to become a veterinarian or an artist. “Vets help the future of the world and I also love drawing, especially pics of my family.”

It certainly seems as though the world’s the oyster for this little pearl of Cape Town.