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For the latest news and results from the Nebelhorn Trophy, please see the temporary site at www.kiira-korpi.com.

The season 2009-2010 starts next Friday on the 25th of September 2009 with the Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany, Oberstdorf. Kiira will premiere her completely new short program and the free skating has also been renewed with new choreography and dress.

Kiira says that the training has gone well and without any illnesses, and because of the short last season she has been able to start basic training early and has a good start for the season.

There isn’t any special objectives for the first competition, but she aims skate a complete program and perform a jump sequence of a triple lutz and a double toe-loop. Later in the season the sequence would change to a set of two triple jumps.

The Nebelhorn competition is a place to demonstrate skills for the January’s European Championships in Tallinn, Estonia. Finland will have three places for the ladies competition. The two Vancouver Olympics 2010 places will be given based on the performances of the European Championships.

Because of the season starting, the Finnish News Agency (STT) wrote a news story which all the major news providers published:

• Aamulehti (translation)
• Helsingin Sanomat (translation)
• Ilta-Sanomat (translation)

The Tampere Philatelic association celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, and they are organizing a National Stamp Exhibition on 9th to 11th of October 2009 in Pirkkahalli in Tampere.

There they will unveil three postage stamps and a postcard featuring Kiira Korpi. The national postal service will also provide a skating themed rubber-stamp to be used when marking postage stamps.

Kiira is currently preparing for the next season, but will attend the exhibition if her schedule allows it.

In the meantime anyone can order legal postage stamps with their own photo from Itella’s website. Minimum order is 20 stamps, but there can be two different pictures in one order (10 stamps of both). Price is 1.40 € per stamp.

Original arcticle by Aamulehti.

The national Finnish figure skating team had a press conference in Vierumäki sports institute regarding the beginning of season, and because of that couple of television interviews has surfaced. The YouTube videos are translated, so be sure the turn on closed captioning if you want to read the subtitles.

• A short interview of Kiira and Laura in MTV3’s sports news on 29th of August 2009:
• Longer segment of Kiira’s interview from MTV3’s web-site:
• Yle’s interview of Kiira, Laura and Susanna on sports news on 29th of August 2009:

from EEVA magazine text by Anu Kylvén, Photos by Sakari Majantie

 

“Come and get me, my legs don’t carry me”

Kiira Korpi has just arrived from a holiday trip in Nice, where she went with her good friend, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. She has still one week of holiday left in July, and the practising schedule for the Midsummer week was also eased down. The life of a professional athlete doesn’t seem to be so disciplined after all. But Kiira points out that summer is the time for basic conditioning for figure skaters. In July Kiira will visit the Olympic city Vancouver, where she will stay for 3 weeks. She will be joined by fellow athletes Laura Lepistö, Susanna Pöykiö and Jenni Vähämaa.

(more…)

<update>
We just succeeded to make a new forum.
Please try to click here (or “New Forum” in left side Main Menu) to go there and try to write something.
All members can view/post/edit/delete/modify forums when you logged in.
Even as a guest, you can view & post comments. 
To join us as a member, just mail us to mail[at]kiira-korpi.net.

Thanks,
admins / kiira-korpi.net

//

Hi guys and ladies,
The comment system seems out of order now… I’m sorry but I don’t know the reason.
I just tried to add a new comment by myself but no comments can be submitted even logged in as admin. 
I’ll install another simple forum system to our site hopefully in few days.
Then I’ll try to re-build the whole system and move all articles to another server
hopefully before the new season starts… Any help except money would be appreciated.

Kiira was featured in a story segment in the YLE TV1 sports news today on 28th of June 2009.

Kiira was a guest on YLE’s Summeri live television show on Tuesday 16th of June 2009. Summeri is an annual summer show targeted for children and teenagers which airs live every weekday during summer at 10:35 AM Finnish local time from Helsinki Swimming Stadium. The guest list for whole summer can be found here. The episode can be seen from Yle Areena until 23rd of June 2009.

• Video: Kiira and Anna says hello
• Video: Kiira decorates a yellow plastic duck
• Pictures: Kiira and Anna as guests

Kiira’s season will begin at 16 October in Paris..she’ll be also in China two weeks later.
News from Aamulehti

GP Series　2009/2010	Competitions	Date	Host Cities	Finnish Ladies Participants
FRANCE	Trophée Eric Bompard	Oct. 15 – 18, 2009	Paris, France	Kiira KORPI
RUSSIA	Rostelecom Cup	Oct.22 – 25, 2009	Moscow, Russia	Susanna POYKIO
CHINA	Cup of China	Oct. 29 – Nov. 1, 2009	Beijing, China	Kiira KORPI
JAPAN	NHK-Trophy	Nov. 5 – 8, 2009	Nagano, Japan	Laura LEPISTO
USA	Skate America	Nov. 12 – 15, 2009	Lake Placid, NY, USA	Susanna POYKIO
CANADA	Skate Canada	Nov. 19 – 22, 2009	Kitchener, ON, Canada	Laura LEPISTO

Here is the whole translation of last weekend’s Iltalehti article. I’m sorry for the mistakes :) I also translated little boxes next to the main article. 　

Even walking was hard

Figure skater Kiira Korpi learned to appreciate things in a different way when she suddenly couldn’t take for granted the main meaning of her life.

European figure skating championships, ladies free skating at the full Hartwall-arena in the end of January. Kiira Korpi is concentrating to her first jump when her skates suddenly hits themselves. She fells down and crashes very fast to the board.

   The whole crowd sighs and thousands of Finnish flags go down but Kiira gets up. She holds her hips, bites her lip and limps to talk to the referee who gives her three minutes time to go on.

   Kiira decides to go on. The first lutz is limbo but after that we see the fighter on the ice. Triple salchow - douple toe loop is excellent and gorgeus step sequence gets the audience to ecstatic cheering. After ending her program Kiira thanks and leaves the ice.

It has gone for four months from this dramatic falling. Kiira goes back to those black moments and says that the blades of skates just hit together and after that there was nothing to do.
   “Human accident. Probably I was circling in too deep edge”
She says and admittes to afraid the worst a few seconds.
   “My hips and knee were hurt but luckily I didn’t hit my head. I have a bad experience of that six years ago. I fell down very badly in Vierumäki in a test skating and hit my head to the board so badly that I got a concussion.”

It was still quite close in EC that Kiira didn’t collapse and start to cry only because of the shock. The couch rescued the situation and said calmly that now we have a little resting break but soon we’ll continue.

(more…)

Chicago Tribune tells that Sasha Cohen (USA) will comeback to competition for 2010 winter Olympic games in Vancouver!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/olympics/chi-sasha-cohen-skate-america,0,2761023.story

Figure skating star Sasha Cohen revealed she has informed U.S. Figure
Skating she would accept their invitation to Skate America next fall, a
move that confirms she will come back to competition in an attempt to
make the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

This will make the Olympic year more interesting for figure skating fans.

http://www.sashacohen.com/
http://www.sashafans.com/

Once again, just like last year, the organization of advertisers in Finland did a survey of sponsorship business in Finland among their member companies. Kiira was the most valued target for sponsorship for the second year in a row. In overall sports went down in popularity, but ice hockey and Kiira Korpi were among the more popular ones. Kiira was the only single person who was specifically named by the members. The other popular targets were music festivals and the modern art gallery in Helsinki.

More information in Finnish:

• Original press release.
• Kauppalehti.fi news story.
• Yrittajat.fi announcement.
• Iltalehti.fi article.

Early article published in a weekly magazine “Apu” (2003, April 4th)

Kiira Korpi wants to make it on her own

Figure skating prospect

Kiira Korpi, 14, is doing the spins in the big rink of Hakametsä Ice Hall, famous for its ice hockey. The skill and grace of the young figure skater fills the hall even if the stands are empty during the training.

Kiira, 164 cm and 52 kg, enjoys her skating.

- My size is quite right for this sport. The bigger you are, of course the more impressive you look, but if you are smaller, you can better control yourself and your movements, Kiira says.

At the same time, standing on the familiar team bench in his former place of employment, there is Rauno Korpi. He is watching her daughter’s art, but glances a couple of times also at the ceiling of the ice hall. There hangs the championship flags of Tampere hockey clubs. Korpi’s and Tappara’s championship in 1988 has remained the last one until this spring. That third consecutive year of Tappara’s championship saw also the birth of daughter to the Korpi family, Kiira, who already has grown to be Nordic Champion in her sport. Also in this season she entered first time onto the World Championship level ice in Czech Republic. She finished 7th in her group, even when her oldest rivals were already 18 years of age.

(more…)

The Finnish commercial television channel MTV3 has been airing a four part documentary, called “Behind the brand”, about history of Finnish advertisement on TV. This time the program was about Valio. There was a short section of sports sponsorship, and Kiira was mentioned as an example. The clip also featured a short interview of Kiira.

Last summer Kiira was said to be the single most valuable sponsorship target in Finland. They announced that the sponsorship deal will continue until at least 2010.

Kiira took part in a figure skating show in a town Rauma, here in Finland, last Sunday. There were two identical shows on 1PM and 5PM, lasting 2 hours each. Kiira performed the Abba-medley and the “Butterfly” as in the gala of this year’s European Championships, only this time she was accompanied for a while by little skater “butterflies” from the local, organising figure skating club from Rauma. I am currently uploading the videos on YouTube.  Just click on the link at the end and you’ll find them. I am still not much of a videographer, but what can you do… There will be both Kiira’s solo skates + a portion of her and Laura with kids doing the “I like to move it move it!” … and then both Laura’s solo skates and one of Susanna’s (maybe I will upload her other one, too, but with that one I did really bad video work, losing her twice from camere etc…)

Also performing in this show were and dozens and dozens of local junior skaters - the youngest being 3 years old I guess.

The event took place in hall that takes about 5000 spectators for a hockey game, if we count the standing places, too. There were perhaps a bit over 2000 spectators for this event: the main stand were full on both shows and there were also some people on both end stands.

It was a nice experience, and a treat to see all these stars (as in “Stars on Ice” shows in the USA) performing in this same event, and each with two solo skates and little bit in combined performances as well. The image here is the cover of the program booklet for this show.

The videos are and will be here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Roikale95
(I also recently uploaded of Kiira’s visit in a Finnish children’s program from April 2006, in case you haven’t noticed - with English subtitles)

Thanks Taskinen, for your movie and translated version.

Well, guys, here is something new about Kiira`s voyage to Moscow:
http://www.mtv3.fi/urheilu/muutlajit2008/uutiset.shtml/arkistot/muutlajit/2009/03/845321?taitoluistelu

Could you please tell me does it contain any interesting information? (looks like there is something about Marie Claire)

Yes, it’s just coming without Kiira (but no doubt that Kiira is watching it).

Official site
http://www.isuworlds2009.com/

Results
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2009/index.htm

Let’s cheer Team Finland!

Laura and Susanna, get 3 seats for Finnish ladies!!!

So here it is, post in Malakhov`s blog:

Heels for Ice Princess

Kiira Korpi is known as one of the most beautyfull figure-scater in the world, sex symbol of the world`s ice rink. But in everyday life this tiny blonde, who looks like young Grace Kelly, acts modestly. And when fashion-assistents lay in front of her fashion-branded dresses for photosession, she admiringly but with caution takes her look at Dior shoes.

-It is the first time I wear high-heeled shoes! Andrei, if people in Tampere saw me wearing this shoes, they would call ambulance!

-That`s right! -I`m laughing. -It`s necessary to take care of the major adornment of finnish team on the next World Champs (22 December in Los-Angeles). [idiot, he doesn`t know, that she is not going to participate in world hamps. “rattling off the salt on the wound” - as russians say]

-In fact, there no places to wear such a beauty.Maybe only to the Mummydolls museum or to the University. But I won`t be able to right in time for the lectures in these shoes.

Her every day is planned to the minutes. She wakes up at 6 am, then she has a training on the rink, then she goes to study (Kiira studies Economics), then she has gymnastics and choreography, then she goes to the ice again. What is more, this 20-year old “athlete, beauty, komsomolka"* is the face of Valio. When on her second day in Moscow we were having a breakfast in “Ararat Park Hyatt”, she saw Valio joghurts and this extraordinary girl sterted telling me about it`s influence to the body, stating latest scientists researches as examples.
*quote from old russian film

-Well, as it says in one our song, planes are the first for you**. But what about relationships with guys? - i ask her with deep-kept hope
**planes firstly, girls - secondly - that`s how it goes in that russian song

-I had a beautyfull lovestory. But now my heart is free.
(in finnish media her ex-boyfriend is believed to be silver medalists of Freestyle World Champs)

-Russian figure-scaters will be happy about this fact!

-I know Yagudin, Plyuschenko and Urmanov well. They are real ice kings.

-I read that your father was dreaming about different sport-career for you.

-My father, Rauno Korpi - is famous finnish ice-hockey player. Now he is the coach of our Lady`s National Team. But my older sister Petra and my friends were scating, that`s why I choosed figure scates to hockey, despite my great hockey future, which they predicted.

Showing her the billboards in front of the hotel windows:
-Do you like Tatyana Navka`s photosession?

She is gazing at the picture of famous scater:
-Oh! It`s even hard to identify her here!

Then our conversation is interrupted by the telephone call.
-Excuse me! - she is looking as admiringly as yesterday she looked at Dior shoes. -My friends wrote to me that according APA Andrei Malakhov and singer Alsu will present Eurovision semifinals. Such a popular man is interviewing me?! Wow!

-Could you please let me have a call to find details? -I`m asking the Ice Princess. -This news is surprise for me!

-Sure! -she laughts. -You have planes as the first too!

Something like that, guys. I`m not the best translater, but I think this can help you to uderstand what Malakhov wrote. Here are also 2 photos (one is new and the second I can`t remember seeing):

Enjoy!