Navarro and Bommentre Maintain Their Individuality

Kimberly Navarro, who will be 28 in April, and Brent Bommentre, 24, maintained their position at U. S. Nationals in 2009 with a second consecutive bronze medal. They have finished in the top five every year since they started skating together four years ago.

A week after Nationals, they placed sixth at the 2009 Four Continents Championships in Vancouver, a year after winning a bronze medal there. "We just wanted to enjoy this week and get a chance to skate on the Olympic ice," Bommentre said.

The dancers finished 12th at the World Championships last season, but were bumped from the team this year in favor of Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto, who missed U.S. Nationals due to injury.

"Ben and Tanith deserve to go if Ben's ready," noted Bommentre. "They're our best chance to get three dance teams for the Olympics."

"It gives us a chance to focus on next year," Navarro added. "Last year was difficult because we had a congested season and didn't finish until the end of March. That was the shortest time we ever had to prepare for the next season. We were worried that we wouldn't have time to get comfortable with our programs. It was a huge deal that we got to Nationals and had the performance we wanted."

Robbie Kaine and Cheryl Demkowski Snyder coach the dancers, who train in Ardmore and Aston, Pennsylvania. They usually put in five to six hours on the ice, six days a week.

Each season, the dancers try to add new and different moves to their programs. "We're always working with our choreographers to develop creative new moves," Bommentre said. "All of our lifts are new this season. We're proud that we're not just repeating old stuff."

The dancers went in a new direction with their choreography as well, using choreographers from outside the skating world. "We talked to Cindy Stewart in Los Angeles," Navarro explained. "She's in the know with all the hot choreographers so she recommended Barry Lather and Louis van Amstel."

Louis van Amstel choreographed the couple's original dance using Why Don't You Do Right by Sinead O'Connor and Hey Pachuco.

"We listened to a lot of music," Navarro said. "We played around with some Louie Prima stuff because we wanted something more mature, something to show a relationship between a man and a woman."

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