British ice dancers — now Olympians on their way to the World Championships — find their footing in Aston

NBC’s Olympic broadcasts tend to heavily feature American athletes and those most likely to earn medals.

But there was a pair of ice dancers competing last month in Milan, Italy, who have been living and training in Delaware County for the past several years.

Phebe Bekker, 20, and James Hernandez, 24, represent Great Britain, but they train at IceWorks in Aston with their coaches, Penny Coomes and Nicholas Buckland, three-time Olympians who also are from Britain.

(Bekker and Hernandez also occasionally skate at Igloo Ice Rink in Mount Laurel, where Isabeau Levito also trains. Levito, who represents the United States, recently turned 19, finished 12th in women’s singles at the Olympics, and also will be competing at the World Figure Skating Championships starting Wednesday.)

If you missed them in Milan, there’s another chance to catch Bekker and Hernandez this week at Worlds in Prague, Czech Republic. The rhythm (or short) dance is Friday, and the event wraps up with the free dance on Saturday.

Peacock likely will stream all competitors.

Bekker has lived for five years in Glen Mills with a host family, and Hernandez in “sunny Wilmington. My second family is my cat,” he said.

The Olympics were as exciting as they hoped — but they had to keep their heads in the game.

“You build up for so long, and it’s a dream for so long,” Hernandez said of the Olympics, where they placed 17th, “that it’s easy to have expectations. It was just so exciting getting to walk around the village or in your own little city.”

“At the end of the day,” Bekker said, at Olympics “we are just doing what we do in practice. It’s just got a little bit more adrenaline, a little bit more of a magic spark to it. But it’s just like Worlds. It is just like Europeans. It’s just like any event that we would do.”

They reminded each other about that every time they stepped on the ice.

» READ MORE: South Jersey’s Isabeau Levito finishes 12th, fellow American Alysa Liu claims gold medal at Olympics

“We couldn’t get overwhelmed in the moment,” Bekker said, “because it could not benefit you. We’re happy that we kept our calm.”

Added Hernandez: “The rings are everywhere. The boards are this unified color, which is very different, and the rings are in the middle [of the ice]. It is a reminder: You’ve made it, almost, but it’s also a distraction. Everybody found them tough because the first-time Olympians, you are living your dream, and all of a sudden your mind’s like, ‘Oh, hang on, I have to do what I know how to do.’”

It helped, Hernandez said, that unlike most competitions, which are quick visits, the skaters were in Milan about three weeks, which gave them time to settle in physically and emotionally.

“I’m just so proud that we skated two programs that we can be so proud of,” he said. “Because, ultimately, you’re going there for the experience, but also to show your best skating on the biggest stage possible. And there’s a bazillion cameras surrounding the ice rink, a bit different to normal.”

Then it was back to work, but they’re excited to go to Worlds, too — Hernandez says they’ve never been to Prague.

“We always focus on trying to enjoy as much journey as possible,” Bekker said of life in competitive skating. Besides working hard, it’s important to “listen to ourselves and to trust the journey and trust the process. We’ve just come off this massive high from the Olympics. Knowing that we’ll peak at the right time, that’s a big thing.”

Both ice dancers grew up skating near home in England. Bekker is from Ashtead, Surrey, and Hernandez from Amersham, outside of London. They both spent many of their early years skating in Guildford, Surrey.

The rink was good, they said, but it did not have enough ice time for serious training.

It had a “single ice pad shared between so many people, doing so many different things,” Hernandez said. “And, ultimately, we need ice time to improve. So as that demand for needing ice time comes into play, we had to look elsewhere.”

Hernandez came to the United States first, but his previous ice dance partner quit skating during the COVID-19 pandemic. He considered going back to school and moving on, but he realized he wasn’t finished skating. So Coomes reached out to Bekker’s coach on his behalf.

Bekker also happened to be between partners. She had almost matched up with a French skater when Coomes called.

But that was when COVID was in full force, and there was a travel ban in effect between the United States and the United Kingdom. Neither could travel to try skating with the other.

Instead, they arranged to meet up in Serbia, a non-Schengen European country that would let both in, “the craziest loophole with the travel ban,” Bekker said.

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“We agreed to meet halfway in a country that we could quarantine in,” Hernandez said. “So we met up in Serbia and spent the first part of getting to know each other cooped up in Belgrade during peak COVID.

“Ice rinks were shut in the U.K. for six months,” he said. “It wasn’t feasible to do a trial there, and we knew that we wanted to kind of speed the process up. So we were very lucky that we could make it happen in the most unlikely of ways.”

When things opened up, they flew to the United States. Bekker was 15. She had already been doing online school while skating with her previous partner, so she continued that until she finished her high school exams.

“It actually allowed for a slightly easier transition,” Bekker said. “When I first moved here, I had, like, no friends. I had no life, and I had no way of getting around. So it was very helpful for that.”

Skating-wise, Bekker was concerned at first. Hernandez had been to Junior Worlds with his former partner, and she felt like she was behind.

“What gives you confidence in the fact that I will improve so much more and quick enough to catch up with James?” she asked their coaches.

It was Hernandez who assured her: With more ice time and fewer distractions, she would make quick strides. IceWorks has four ice surfaces — three NHL-size rinks and an Olympic one.

“The ice time is so good,” Bekker said he told her. “You don’t have to be constantly looking around you before you start an exercise. Or you don’t have to keep circling around because someone’s got in your way.

“I think that’s truly what made me improve that much quicker,” Bekker said.

Hernandez agreed.

“We feel like every single season we have seismically improved on the previous season,” he said. “I think that is such a brilliant goal, because it’s brought us to results that we’re so proud of.”

After Worlds, Bekker and Hernandez will take some time off. Both have new nieces in England, and Hernandez said he also would like to go somewhere warm. And then it’s back to Aston and training. Both are in it for the long haul.

“We have short-term goals in terms of improvement, but our view was to go to the Milan Games when we first started skating together,” Hernandez said. “Once this season’s done, we sit down and we look four years ahead. We take it from there.”

South Jersey’s Isabeau Levito will be competing in the women’s events.