Last year in Blackpool we became European Latin American Same Sex Dance Champions.

This year in Stockholm we were ready to defend our title, but knew we had tough competition ahead of us. Dancing in the Winter Gardens in Blackpool is something magical. What Wimbledon is for tennis players is Blackpool for dancers. Winning a title for the first time is one thing, to repeat that is even more difficult. So we knew that EuroGames Stockholm would be a different experience.

The tournament was well organised, ESSDA knows how to do that. The atmosphere between the competitors was great, but that’s Same Sex dancing! We all want to win but we can be happy for other couples who score high.

We won the silver medal! Still a very good result and you can’t win them all. We are going to practice harder for next year so we can recapture our title. We want to stay longer in Helsinki to experience the EuroGames atmosphere more than we could do this year.

We already heard that the venue will be more close to the centre and all the venues will be close to each other. That can give us more audience and we have the possibility to see some other sports as well. And it goes without saying that participating at EuroGames is an experience every LGBTIQ athlete should have as often as is possible in your life!

Looking back we felt that the venue for Ballroom Dancing was a little far from the centre of Stockholm so the audience numbers we on the low side. In spite of that we had an enthusiastic audience sitting at one side of the floor. As dancer you will always dance to the audience. So our advice for future venues is to choose a venue where you have audience at three sides and maybe a little bit closer to the dance floor. And finally, would it be possible to play the national anthem of the winning couple? This makes the experience that bit more special!

Kelly Monshouwer & Liejette Spindler