Spanish ice dance team Olivia Smart and Tim Dieck continue our A-Z series!
Advice you’d give your younger self ?
Tim: I would say never give up. It’s of course pretty normal to say, but I’d say it to my younger self. I would definitely say whatever you face, even if it’s something that really doesn’t feel nice, if it hurts you, don’t worry about it. You’re gonna overcome it and everything is gonna make you stronger.
Olivia: For me, I’d say – follow your dreams, no matter what. Follow your gut and just listen to what your heart and your gut say, and your path will take you in the right direction, no matter the bumps in the road.
Bedtime?
Olivia: for me, it’s like 9. Or earlier.
Tim: Yeah, I’m not going to bed before 11. It depends. When we skate early, sometimes we have 7:30 sessions, then I go to bed at 10, but usually not before 11.
Comfort food?
Tim: Any kind of pasta.
Olivia: Mashed potatoes.
Your last Dream or any recurring Dreams?
Tim: I usually don’t dream.
Olivia: I do dream but can never remember them. I dream of falling sometimes. When I’m in a deep sleep, I’ll dream of falling and then I’m like, god, okay, I’m good. I can’t really say it’s a nightmare, it’s not a dream, but that’s something that happens when I’m really tired and really relaxed; that usually happens to me.
Tim: I had a dream where I was in a snowboard freestyle competition. No reason why. I have no clue.
Olivia: Did you win?
Tim: I don’t know.
Olivia: You woke up before you got the results.
Tim [laughs] Yeah!
Embarassing moment you can laugh at now?
Tim: Last year, our first competition, Nebelhorn Trophy, where we fell in the choreo lift. That was very, very embarrassing. I was very heartbroken after, but now I can laugh about it because it made us so strong for last season. And we nailed this lift after and we nailed each competition after. So we learned from it. Me personally, I learned a lot from that.
Olivia: I second that one because both of us left that competition depleted and embarrassed and we came out stronger in the end.
Fun fact about yourself?
Tim: When I was a kid and my parents gave me some sort of sugar like pancakes, I could not stand still. I was running around. I was already an active kid but I was crazy when I got pancakes.
Olivia: When I was a kid I used to not be able to eat cheese before bedtime because it would give me nightmares.
Sarah: That’s a real thing!
Olivia: Is it?
Sarah: That’s a real thing, apparently. It’s cheese and chocolate, I hear, are the two things you can’t have before bed.
Olivia: Well, when I was younger I had one really really bad night of nightmares and I had cheese before bed. And then ever since then I was like, I can’t eat cheese before bed because I knew I would wake up in hysterics from the scariest nightmares so I had a bit of a phobia of it for a while.
Goals that you’re working on right now?
Olivia: Right now, even for myself – it’s still to this day and has been for a while – but currently, the biggest one is trust the process. With my skating career, with my life, with my timeline of the way things are folding out, it’s just trust the process.
Tim: Yeah, this I actually agree on, myself too, but also to grow each day to be a better person and to be better in all type of things, like better skater, better person, better everything. Try to achieve every day as it was your best.
Hidden talent?
Tim: I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s hidden. Well, yeah, I guess it’s hidden. I used to play tennis quite well and still play it now in the summer. I stopped skating for two years, actually, to play tennis. So yeah, that I love tennis.
Olivia: I’m really good at gymnastics.
Can you play an Instrument?
Olivia: The triangle.
Tim: I learned the piano a little bit for myself, but just on YouTube. I wouldn’t say I can play it, but I know a few songs. Two, three songs maybe.
Dream Job as a child?
Tim: Actor. Yeah, still to this day.
Olivia: I wanted to be a vet. I really wanted to be a vet. And then I saw how hard vet school looks and I was like, figure skating seems great.
Sarah: Is that something you both want to do after skating?
Olivia: [To Tim] That’s a bit more possible for you. For me, no, I don’t see myself going to vet school now. I think I’ll definitely do something in a bit more of my area of expertise now. I would love to. I love animals. So that’s why really. But I’ll just surround myself with animals.
Sarah: But we’ll see you [Tim] on the big screen in 10 years.
Tim: Hopefully.
Olivia: In the next Dune movie.
Go-to Karaoke song?
Olivia: Anything Celine Dion for me.
Tim: I have to tag it.
Language you’d like to learn/speak?
Tim: An Asian language, Japanese or Mandarin.
Olivia: Japanese.
Sarah: How many do you speak now?
Tim: Three and a half. German, English, Russian, and of course Spanish. And now I have an Italian girlfriend so I guess I will learn Italian at some point.
Olivia: For me it’s just English and Spanish.
Movie night favourite?
Olivia: I love any of the Transformers movies. I’m a big Transformer fan.
Tim: I’d say now, because it’s fresh around Christmas, I like Harry Potter.
Niche interest of yours?
Tim: It’s not really niche, but I like gaming to wind down after training a little bit.
Sarah: What’s your favorite game?
Tim: Any, on the computer.
Olivia: I really enjoy going to the spa. Any chance, any day off I get, you’ll find me spending money going to the spa.
One book, TV show or movie you would recommend?
Olivia: Book, for any easy read… I’m not a big reader, but I tried to start reading more a couple years ago. And any Colleen Hoover book has really brought me into the story and taken me out of the real world and that’s why I want to start reading; to kind of do that. My attention span is really bad. So when it comes to watching movies, it’s hard. TV shows I can get hooked on if it’s really good. But books, especially the Colleen Hoover books, all of them are really interesting and impactful and just a nice brain rot thing to do.
Tim: I’d say the biography from Dirk Nowitzki. He was like a former German basketball player. That one was really good for me. And TV show: I mean everybody knows it, La Casa de Papel, my favourite TV show.
Do you have any Pets/a dream Pet?
Tim: Dogs.
Olivia: Yeah, all the dogs. We want to get Linda a little brother at some point. So maybe another dog at some point. And we have a backyard.
Sarah [to Tim]: Do you have any pets?
Tim: I do, but not in Montreal. Her name is Amy, our family dog. She’s at home with my family, so whenever I get the chance to go to Germany, I see her.
Favourite Quality about the other person?
Tim [to Olivia]: I would say about you, that whatever you put in your head, you just go for it. You attack it and no matter what, you’re going for it.
Olivia: Tim, it’s his gentleman-like aspect. He takes care of me and the people around him. You can tell he was born as a mummy’s boy, because he knows how to take care of the women in his life very well.
Role model?
Tim: For me it was, or still is, Roger Federer. I just loved, or still love, ’til this day how he shows up to events and competitions. [He’s a] very professional and very grounded person and I love that aspect about him.
Olivia: Well, I have a lot of role models and people that inspire me, but one that happened recently is I had an encounter with Nathalie [Péchalat] literally earlier today and she told me that our free dance is one of the best free dance choreography she’s seen and she was really impressed and very complimentary of it. I was just taking in all of that moment because I remember I actually took her gold medal onto the ice for her in 2012 at the European Championships in Sheffield. So for her saying that to me here, and having that memory back then and watching her as an ice dancer back then… she was fantastic. I didn’t watch ice dance that much as a young ice dancer but I remember watching Nathalie and Fabian [Bourzat] and being in awe of them.
Skating program or performance you wish you could have seen live?
Olivia: I would have loved to have seen Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s Bolero live. I don’t think the videos do it justice. I think it would have been absolutely phenomenal to see that live and the atmosphere and the moment they hold with that program and the crowd. And we feel that with [our] Dune [program], but holding a crowd in a moment with the program is really rare and really special. And I do think that Bolero program with the audience at the Olympics was exactly that.
My friend was sat in the crowd [at Europeans], and she sat near Christopher Dean and she said that he stood up for us after our free dance and she was like, “he didn’t stand up for everybody.” And we went, nice.
Tim: I agree with that.
Three things you’d bring to a desert island?
Olivia: My Dune costume. The Dune 1 one. Because it’s already ratty anyway. And it’s already been to the desert in Dubai. A water bottle. And random, but a pair of gloves. I feel like I need them. A pair of gloves or a pair of socks.
Tim: Water obviously; some sort of glasses to protect my eyes from the desert. And sunscreen.
Olivia: Oh man, that’s way smarter than mine.
Bonus T … for Tattoo!
Olivia and Tim also revealed that they have matching “Lisan al-Gaib” tattoos!
Olivia: We both have it. I got it the back of my neck, down the back. Right after Boston Worlds we went to L.A. and we got tattoos for our birthday. But we weren’t expecting to do Dune 2, so we were like, well. Are we going to put x2 or 2.0?
Who or what do you think is Underrated?
Tim: Because we are in skating, the people who make skating possible. So everyone behind the scenes. First of all of course are skaters, but we are not behind, we are in front of the crowd. But everyone who makes skating competitions possible, who organizes. Like all the volunteers, like you guys, you put us out there, with interviews and everything.
Olivia: I think figure skating in general. I think we’re a very niche sport and niche is good. But figure skating lacks a lot of attention in terms of sponsorships and higher-end brand collaborations. Unless you’re an Olympic gold medalist, then people aren’t showing interest, like for other sports like snowboarding, skiing … the cooler sports. But when people learn the backstory and what goes behind what we do, to see that four minutes on the ice, people are blown away by it. It’s just, you’ve got to let people in first to have the interest to do that.
So I do think figure skating in general should get more acknowledgement than just at the Olympics. Every four years of the Games it does get the attention it deserves on social media and stuff, but in between that, when I explain to people that we don’t have sponsors, people are gobsmacked. We’re lucky. We have the help we get from the Federation and everything, but for the younger athletes coming up, we want to encourage them more and more to continue. It’s a very expensive sport, so it’s difficult when the biggest game doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
View that takes your breath away?
Tim: Mountains. Being high up on a mountain and seeing the mountains around.
Olivia: For me the opposite, the ocean. Anytime I’m at a beach or just by the ocean… I don’t get to see the ocean daily, so that’s a gorgeous sight to see.
While we’re at it, a little extra…
[We forgot to ask Olivia and Tim a W, so here is a little extra from our conversation!]
Sarah: Did you see what Deanna Stellato did with the Oscar de la Renta dress? LinkedIn. So start telling everyone to use LinkedIn.
Olivia: I have a LinkedIn page. I don’t use it to my advantage, but I messaged a brand as well this past summer that does dresses that are very in the Dune style. They did respond to me, which I’m shocked because they are such a big brand. They do a lot of celebrities’ red carpet dresses and they did respond to me saying that they’re not doing other collaborations right now. But I was like okay, at least I got a response. But I messaged Deanna as well saying congrats on the dress, and she responded saying something like I hope this opens the door for many other skaters, and then she said I see you in Dior one day, and I was like, nice, thanks Deanna. Send me their LinkedIn profile!
An eXperience that changed you?
Olivia: I’d say this experience, I’d say this Europeans. Just skating under such pressure of [it] being a home crowd made me realise that I can do it even with the extra nerves added on. But also I skated with so much gratitude this past week, and that really shifted my perspective as well on why I’m doing this and who I’m doing it for. It’s not just for myself, it’s for my family, the support that’s gotten me to this moment. So yeah, I’d say these past couple of days here in Sheffield.
Tim: It’s boring to have the same [answer], but I’d say the same. Because it was a difficult one, a very long week and difficult week, and especially after not getting the scores we hoped for in the rhythm dance, coming out in the free and performing the way we did yesterday – we really stepped up in our energy.
A Year that you would like to visit?
Tim: 2018.
Olivia: I’d love to visit 2021, COVID year, because as much as I lived it and it happened, it flew by. I don’t remember what happened really. I’d love to live it again and just indulge in that time, that weird time that we had, where we had so much time.
What is your Zodiac sign (and your big 3), and do you believe in the zodiac?
Olivia: My zodiac sign – our zodiac sign – is Aries. So when we paired up we were like, two Aries together, hey? That’s big fire. And yeah, I’m a big horoscope, like three signs, type of girl. If I see something about Aries, I’m reading it, I’m screenshotting it, I’m making that come to life, in my life and where I am.
Tim: I’m not a big guy about that but I do believe [that] what you say about Aries is true. About like very [strong] headed, and in a very good way though. Like I also said about Olivia earlier, if we have something in mind we go and do it.
Read our previous A-Z interviews:
A to Z with Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel
A to Z with Loïcia Demougeot and Théo Le Mercier
A to Z with Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps
A to Z with Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez
A to Z with Yuka Orihara and Juho Pirinen
A to Z with Júlia Sylvía Gunnarsdottir and Manuel Piazza
A to Z with Natálie Taschlerová and Filip Taschler
