Now, as an ambassador for Fabletics, she added:“I get all the sports clothes I could possibly dream of – I always have to remind myself I’m living my teenage dream.” At 18, Bauer landed a skating job in Hong Kong. “That’s when I first started earning money through ice skating, then I went on the cruise ships and that’s when the pay checks got bigger. “It does definitely feel empowering that I’m able to look after myself entirely. I always knew that I wanted to earn independence. But I definitely see the privilege in doing what I do.” Training as a teenager was tough, however. “Figure skating is a very beautiful, elegant sport, but it is brutal as well.You have to be thick skinned to do this. “My coaches were really strict with me. Now that I’m older, I don’t see that was necessary back then, the way they were yelling at us. I always thought that was just the normal way of getting results, by being really tough on yourself and other people, applying a lot of pressure on yourself. “So I think I developed a very thick skin – from when I was born to be fair. It caused me a lot of sadness over my years growing up, but also it really created a basis for me consistently doing really well.” Caring for her mental health now is major, she said, after a past battle with disordered eating. “The lack of looking after my mental health when I was a competitive skater and a teenager is what caused me having to stop competitive figure skating.An eating disorder I had back then, that I was struggling with for over a decade, is what really destroyed me. It took me over 10 years to say that I had that, because it was so severe for me.”
Coincidentally, it was also her dad’s favourite artist, who died after a six-year battle with cancer in 2021, three weeks before her series partnered with Brendan Cole. “It was weird because my grieving only really started when I finished the series, because I was so distracted. I threw myself into work,” Bauer recalled. “I had so many moments where I would lock myself in the toilet and just cry for an hour. I know that’s normal and you should never judge how someone is grieving, because everyone grieves in different ways. “The very first time after I finished the series with Brendan, I came back home and [my dad] wasn’t there, I felt like he’d died again. I felt like I was dying because I couldn’t breathe, I was in shock again, which is really bizarre.” After everything, self care has become especially important – and whenever she doesn’t have a busy Dancing On Ice schedule, Bauer takes long walks and swims a lot. “I always have half a litre of water before I get up, I like to go to the sauna twice a week, I feel like I can get into a meditative state when I’m in there.
“I go for a walk without my phone, maybe taking a journal and writing [my] thoughts down.”
As a qualified personal trainer, she knows how to train in the gym. “But it’s not what I like anymore. I like outdoorsy things like hiking and walking,” said Bauer. “People really underestimate the power of walking.”
She had therapy “for many years” as well as counselling – which she still keeps up today.
“My relationship with my body and food is the best it has ever been,” she added.“It’s only been the last three years where I haven’t had any thoughts about my food habits. I know what triggers my eating disorder, I can sense whenever my mind is telling me [that] my thoughts are circulating around food again – that’s when the vicious circle starts. But because of all the counselling, my meditation, my yoga, I now know how to deal with it and how to take a reset. “I don’t ever weigh myself, I could not have a scale [in my house]. I have no idea how much I weigh.When I see a scale, my stomach even starts hurting because it reminds me of what it did to me when I was young.” On Dancing On Ice this weekend, Bauer will be skating to a song personal to celebrity partner Nazaire (“A great student, he really listens and respects me as a coach”).
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