IPSWICH: The manager of the town’s Profiles gyms has had success in another form of keeping fit!

Brian Clark and his partner, Karolina Lubecka, are amateur ballroom dancers and waltzed off with a national championship title in Blackpool.

To enter the competition they had to have reached the final in a regional event, which they did by winning the Cambridgeshire competition earlier in the year.

The Grand Finals day pitches winners from all over the country in one competition, which was held in the Winter Gardens, Blackpool earlier this month.

They beat off stiff competition from over 40 other qualifiers on the day to take the prize dancing the waltz.

Brian and Karolina live near the town centre, and have been dancing together for two years.

Brian, 42, took up dancing after injury forced him to give up amateur football seven years ago.

He said: “I went along to try dancing as another way of keeping fit and found I was quite good at it. The instructor suggested I go in for competitions and it went on from there.”

He has been dancing with Karolina, 30, for two years.

Brian said: “She danced as a youngster and when we met she said she did a bit of dancing and so we danced together and things have gone on from there.”

This was the biggest competition they had won – the Blackpool Winter Gardens is the Wembley Stadium in the world of ballroom dancing.

Brian said: “We had to dance four rounds before reaching the final, which consisted of six couples. There were some really good dancers in the final but we felt that we danced well and had high hopes of getting a good position but never expect to actually come first.”

The couple train at the Lait School of dancing in Clarkson Street. They are already preparing for their next competition at the Winter Gardens early in the New Year.

And now there is even more opportunity for them to practice – a new dance studio has opened as part of the Whitton Profiles Centre – one of the centres that Brian manages.

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