‘I think the Olympics will be easier!’: Ice dancers Bekker and Hernandez on pitch-perfect home Euros

A rite of passage for every British Olympian is kitting out: a full day of picking up and trying on all their brand-new Team GB clothes. With the Winter Olympics just three weeks away in Milano-Cortina, this Monday it’s the turn of the British skaters – figure, speed and short-track – to collect their haul.

Ice dancers Phebe Bekker and James Hernandez are heading to their debut Olympics and are experiencing kitting out for the first time. “I don't have to go shopping for a whole year now,” 20-year-old Bekker laughs. “I never thought I'd be so picky about the way something fits. You've got to take into consideration, like, when I retire, I don't feel like I'm going to be as in shape as I am right now, but I want to keep this stuff forever!”

The pair have arrived at a hotel in Sheffield city centre after a whirlwind weekend, fresh from their highest-place finish at a European Championships yet – made all the better by coming just down the road at the Utilita Arena. They finished 11th, recording a season’s best with their free dance routine to the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack.

Bekker and Hernandez, who are now in their fifth season skating together, are still on cloud nine. “Currently we're still trying to process how amazing this week has been, we're almost like still in the high,” Bekker tells The Independent. “We'll look back at this time as a whole and be so in awe of what we're going through right now.”

Have they had time to process their experience? “Honestly, no,” Hernandez laughs. “Everyone always says in our sport like, be present, and that's something we talk about with our coaches. It’s just one thing after another, so I think we're trying to enjoy it, then in a week we're actually going to the Games.”

Their experience of a home continental championships was like nothing they’d ever experienced before. “We've seen what home crowds have been like at previous skating events, but that was on a different level, the noise and the support and just how positive it made us feel going into performing blew all expectations out of the water,” Bekker says. “I don't think we'll forget what happened over there for a very, very long time.”

Hernandez adds: “I can safely say [it was] probably my favourite skating experience in a competitive environment.”

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And while their debut Olympics is an enormous occasion, Bekker even feels that a home Europeans was a bigger hurdle to clear: “I think the Olympics will be easier than this Europeans mentally! We left everything out on the ice and we'll definitely have to recharge and make sure that we fully recover from this competition, because we want to go into the Olympics with a completely fresh mindset.

“But the experience that we gained from doing this Europeans just before the Olympic Games, it's been so valuable and something that we can carry on for the rest of our careers as well.”

The pair say that rather than feeling extra pressure from skating at home, the atmosphere actually freed them to perform at their best. Hernandez says: “In all sports when someone has like a home crowd, it can go either way, can't it? In football, it's either amazing or they get smashed. It just spurred me on individually, and I think it spurred us on together.”

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Bekker adds: “The whole crowd was there with us in our skate and it was like no matter what we did, we were in it all together.”

It puts them in the perfect position ahead of the dream-come-true experience of a maiden Olympics. Bekker says: “There’s been times growing up that I didn’t think that was possible. There was definitely a lot of doubt.”

Hernandez says his younger self “would be really proud that I've made so many choices in my skating career that has led to this moment and led to us here. You pushed through so many times where the easier option was to do something else. I don’t like calling them sacrifices because they’re choices: I think that if you commit to anything when you're young or growing up, you have to make those right choices, and those are the things that get you to either the peak of sport or they don't. I'm just really proud of all the choices that I think I've made along the way that have led to getting to wear this kit.”