Michal BREZINA

SKATING FAMILY
His father Rudolf is a figure skating coach and his younger sister Eliska is a competitive figure skater as well. He was married in June 2017 to former single and pair skater Danielle Montalbano. (isuresults.com)

SEPARATING SKATING AND PRIVATE LIFE
He tries keep skating out of his private life. “When I come home, we don’t like to talk about skating. We will talk about it, my wife will always ask, how was my day, what did I do, how practice went, but that’s about it. We don’t really go into details. So I don’t have skating in my life 24 hours a day. I think that helps a lot, because it takes my mind off skating completely. Once I leave the rink, I have a life outside skating. It makes it actually a lot easier to come back to the rink and to be ready to work again, because I’m not pressed down by my practices." (isu.org)

MOVING TO CALIFORNIA
In 2016, he changed coaches and moved to the United States of America to train with Rafael Arutyunyan's group in California. (isuresults.com) "I lost my motivation, it was very difficult to prepare myself. Coach [Karel] Fajfr and I broke up in a good way, he recommended this change to me himself." (idnes.cz, 23 Jun 2016)

OWN BUSINESS
With his wife, he founded his own business and clothing line in 2018. (isu.org)

COVID-19
His only competition in the 2020/21 season was the ISU World Championship 2021. "I know the feeling I have in practice, but I haven't felt the competition stress and the adrenaline that you have in competition in a quite long time. In the beginning of the summer when the pandemic broke out, was kind of hard because nobody knew what is going to happen. The rink closed in Irvine for about two and a half months. It was hard planning what to do in the summer for practice, so we have been doing a lot of off-ice and this kind of stuff, trying to take that element of ice away and concentrate more on the basics of getting stronger and faster and add stamina. I think that paid off. Mentally I was drained, but physically I felt OK." (isu.org)

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OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES
Competed at three Olympic Winter Games, making his debut at Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games producing two top-10 finishes. He is just the second Czech male skater (after Tomas Verner) to compete in figure skating at three Olympic Winter Games.

JUNIOR
World Junior Championships silver medallist 2009.
Junior Grand Prix Budapest 2004 (international debut junior - 12th).