Nobody could suggest that Anastasia Vaipan-Law has not made sacrifices to realise her Olympic dream.
‘A riot on ice’ when she first followed in her parents’ footsteps and began ice skating, Vaipan-Law was winning competitions aged only eight, and mastering jumps only a few years later. Even then, she was already starting to dream big.
‘This is going to sound really stupid and just shows the ego of a young person, but I’d say around about 11 or 12 years old, I knew that I had something in me that would eventually make an Olympic Games if I kept my mind to it and kept persevering,’ she recalls.
And persevere she did. When her mum’s work moved them from Blackpool to Aberdeen, Viapan-Law travelled every weekend to Dundee for extra training before making the bold and brave decision to move there by herself, aged only 13, to chase her dream.
Housed with an older skater, Vaipan-Law still had to cook, clean, and fend for herself, all in between school, training, and simply trying to live a normal, teenage life.
It’s a sacrifice and burden that few her age would have considered taking on, but one that has paid off immeasurably as she speaks to Metro a week out from her first Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina.
‘I think that decision shaped me massively,’ she reflects. ‘It’s made me who I am today but when I look back, I’m going to be completely honest, of course, it was hard.
‘I was a young teenager who just wanted to follow her dreams, and I took on the responsibility of doing that and committing to moving away from family and home. That was my choice and I wanted to do that but there’s no doubt that it was hard.
‘But I don’t think I’d be anywhere near where I am now if it wasn’t for learning everything I did at that younger age. Having that independence really gave me an understanding of what determination, commitment and resilience are, which I’ve taken with me to where I am today.’
If moving out of her childhood home as a young teenager was a seminal moment in her career, then another surely came after a serious knee injury in 2018, which forced Vaipan-Law to switch from being a singles skater to pairs. ‘It was like learning a whole new sport,’ she admits.
A big change, but one that has turbocharged her career alongside her skating partner, Luke Digby. The pair are now five-time National Champions and in 2025, finished fifth at the European Figure Skating Championships, the best result for a British pairs team in over 30 years.
‘On the ice at competitions and just the discipline in general, it just suits me so much more,’ she says.
‘I’m a very overthinking person, so it’s very nice for me to have somebody that I can just share my thoughts with and kind of calm down. Before that, I was a bat out of hell on the ice.’
On her fire-and-ice combo with Digby, she adds: ‘Me and Luke are completely different personalities. I’m a bit go-go-go, 100 miles per hour, overthinking, a bit mental, a bit crazy, and he’s a bit more calm, collected and organised.
‘It just kind of brings the best out of each other. I can bring the fun side, and he can bring the serious side, so it’s the perfect match.’
The pair’s positive momentum has continued in recent months, culminating in their seventh-place finish at the European Championships in January, a perfect send-off for the Olympics in front of a packed home crowd in Sheffield.
‘It was everything you could ask for,’ Vaipain-Law says of performing in front of her home fans. ‘I knew it was going to be fun and I knew it was going to be exciting with all the crowd, but I did not for a second realise that it was going to have that much impact on my emotions.
‘Britain is not known for figure skating, but the support that the crowd gave us was like I’ve never experienced before in my life. It truly was something I’ll never, ever forget.’
It is not just Vaipan-Law and Digby flying the British flag and looking to impress in Italy, with ice dance duo Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson also hoping to be in medal contention, having claimed bronze at the European Championships.
Team GB have not won a figure skating medal since the iconic Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean returned to win bronze at the Lillehammer Games in 1994, but Vaipan-Law insists the expectation around this current crop of British athletes only serves to motivate her further.
‘I think knowing that people have these expectations of us is more like a motivation,’ she says. ‘These people really believe in us and can see what we’re doing, and that allows me to go in with confidence rather than like I have to achieve what they’re expecting.
‘Ultimately, I know that we both just want to make sure we go out and put absolutely every bit that we are capable of out onto the ice and hope that timing is in our favour.’
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