The Great Leap Forward

We've all heard the line when we get impatient about anything.
"You've got to take it one step at a time."
Anabelle Langlois and Cody Hay have been doing it that way for two seasons now. But as they move into Year 3 of their pairs partnership, they figure it's high time to pick up the pace.
"We don't want to do the steps one at a time anymore," said Hay, 24, of Dawson Creek, B.C., in assessing where he and Langlois currently stand as a team. "Now we want to start jumping a couple. To be out there (at HomeSense Skate Canada this weekend) like this and compete against the Germans (Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, the winners Saturday at Pepsi Colisee), who are one of the top teams in the world, that's what you want to do.
"You want to be competing with them, not just at the same competition."
But both Langlois and Hay, who wound up fourth after Saturday's pairs free skate, understand why it had to be this way. Langlois climbed as high as fifth in the world with her former partner, Patrice Archetto. But when she joined forces with Hay in 2005, she was taking on someone new with not a second of senior-level experience on his resume.
"We had an odd coupling, based on where Anabelle had been ranked in the world, and where I was ranked," said Hay. "When we started together, she knew what it was like to be at the top of the world. She wanted to get (back) there as fast as possible, and it was hard for her to come back down and rebuild our way back up. She was always trying to jump up a couple flights of stairs instead of taking them one step at a time.”
Now, though, they feel comfortable in accelerating things. Taking that great leap forward, one might say (guess I just did).
"The togetherness and the elements are coming a lot easier now," said Langlois, 26, of Hull, Que. "We want to make great leaps. It's so hard, I don't like putting placements on it. We're always reaching for the top. We wouldn't be putting this much effort into it without (thinking that way).”
Added Hay: "The first two years, if something wasn't right, we had to put it on the side and wait for Lee (Barkell, their coach in Barrie, Ont.) to tell us what was wrong. Or we would battle back and forth about what the other person was doing wrong. Now we can actually tell and fix it ourselves.”