« Okapi: Tell us about your famous spin.
Nicole Hassler: – This is true, I was spinning at incredible speeds and I never got beaten in the number of spin: I was doing about 70 or 80.
But there is a big caveat in this type of record: all your blood is going to your finger tips. That really hurts. I had blood marks all over my arms. Today, thanks to this craziness I suffer from blood circulation issues.
Why this passion for the spin? When I was a kid, my dad, who was my coach, offered me one franc for every 10 rounds I was adding to the spin. At this time, with 1 franc, you could buy a lot of things.
I was quite often training on open sky ice-rinks, by – 25°. To get warm, hop! a spin. I was spinning with one straight leg up, the blood was going to the tip. But as I only know how to spin in one direction, I was only getting the same foot warm. The other one stayed frozen.
Okapi: how did you get back to your senses after such spins?
Nicole Hassler: At the beginning it was horrendous. When I was stopping, I was finding myself stack to the ground. I was thrown to the floor like a little metallic ball would be attracted by a giant magnet. Every time I was trying to get up I was slapped back to the ice. I was really hurting myself … Finally I realised that I only had to wait for the balustrade to stop wobbling. When it stabilised, only then, I was able to get back up. » (OKAPI, Sept 1986)