With the end of an era approaching in Isle of Wight synchronized skating, iowskaters has been trawling through the video vaults to look at how far the discipline has progressed. The clip presented here is from the 2005 National Team Challenge (NTC) at Bracknell on 26 June.

The Wight Diamonds’ music had changed to Birdland. The dresses had changed from red to all gold; these otufits were to resurface in all their itchy glory on other IW synchro teams in years to come. The gold dresses are not the only ones to be reused and modified, as later reports will show. The team is still only skating 12 skaters: it would only reach 16 later in the year.

And here iowskaters admits to a failing: information about the 2005 NTC is next to non-existent. With the IW NTC team having a glorious history of not being placed in the event, the 2005 NTC has gone unreported in our archives, probably because at the time the club’s policy was not to report on placings outside the top three.