FIGURE SKATING: Australia’s newest Olympians took to the ice on Thursday night at the Australian Figure Skating Championships in Melbourne.

A day after being officially selected to the Australian Team, Danielle O’Brien, Greg Merriman and Brendan Kerry were in action, gaining vital competition practice ahead of the Sochi 2014 Games.

O’Brien and Merriman were up first in the ice dancing, and despite not being totally satisfied with their short routine, have taken positive learnings from the performance.

“It wasn’t our best performance,” O’Brien said. “Overall it was just a bit more laboured than what we like to perform.

“Our Finnstep was a little rough, it wasn’t as smooth and the edges didn’t flow as well as it normally would in practice,” she added. “In the twizzles, Greg made a mistake and didn’t grab his foot which is required for a level 4, and then I put my foot down in the third which is something that we have been working on fixing but it didn’t really happen today.”

The pair, who are based in Detroit in the USA, have been focusing heavily on their short dance since securing Olympic qualification in Germany in September, and were upbeat about their performance despite the technical errors.

“It’s a stepping stone,” Merriman said. “Technically we made mistakes, but performance-wise we are stepping up every time we perform. In the lead up to the Games, our coaches want us to take risks with our presentation so that we can nail the technical as well as the presentation when it counts.”

O’Brien and Merriman’s childhood friend and now Olympic teammate Brendan Kerry was a little off his best form in the men’s individual event.

“I feel like going into the last jump I was just thinking about how easy it was going to be and then didn’t concentrate on actually doing the jump, so I let it go,” 19-year-old Kerry said.

“I think I need to just focus more on the program rather than the elements. Today I was thinking about each element rather than the whole performance.”

Since qualifying for the Olympics, Kerry has developed a new free program with more advanced jumps, which he will debut in competition on Friday.

“I want to put out the quad Sal [quadruple Salchow],” he said. “So I want to get that done and I just want to exhibition the new program. I’m a little anxious because I want to get a good first impression.”

In the ladies’ event, Brooklee Han delivered a crowd-pleasing performance to finish the event the top-ranked athlete after the short program.

“Overall I was really happy,” Han said. “The loop could have been a lot better. I’ve been training it better in practices and hopefully tomorrow it will be good in the long. I was really happy with the rest of the program - with the other elements and the execution and the performance as a whole.”

Skating at her home rink is a rare pleasure for the 18-year-old skater who is based in Redding, USA, and she relished the opportunity.

“It was so fun to be out there in front of a home crowd, and to have such a supportive audience. It doesn’t get to happen very often, so it was a lot of fun.”

Australia's other leading female skater, Chantelle Kerry, withdrew from the event after a lengthy bout of illness meant she was not well enough to compete.

Competition continues tomorrow in Melbourne:

12.00 ‐ 13.30 Ladies Free Skate
14.00 ‐ 15.30 Men's Free Skate
15:45 ‐ 16:30 Ice Dance Free Dance

Watch the livestream here: http://www.youtube.com/user/IceSkatingVictoria?feature=watch