Health

These ordinary New Yorkers skate rings around the rest of us

Gliding effortlessly across the ice, Anna Drozda executes a single axel jump followed by the perfect layback spin. Nearby, Michael Esposito rocks a series of spirals and choctaw turns.

“Look, Daddy!” says an awestruck little girl in skates, clinging to the side rail for dear life. “It’s just like the Olympics.”

Lawyer Mary Yelenick hits the ice with elegance at Rockefeller Center.Christian Johnston

But Drozda is not freshly off the plane from Sochi. She’s a 30-year-old art gallery employee training for a regional amateur ice-skating competition. Esposito, 35, is a special education teacher who rediscovered his love of the sport last year.

The two, who skate nearly every day, are part of a small but dedicated scene of adults in the city who are serious figure skaters. They’re far from Olympic caliber — and are many years older than most of the athletes in Sochi — but they spend hours each week learning and practicing simpler but still quite impressive versions of the spins and jumps that professional skaters perform, all while holding down regular jobs off the ice.

“My training is pretty intense at the moment,” says Drozda, who gets up six times a week at 6 a.m. to skate at Chelsea Piers’ Sky Rink and gets private lessons twice weekly. “My dream would be to win at the national level.” Growing up in Omaha, Neb., she competed at the junior level but quit in 1995 because she wanted to concentrate on schoolwork and other sports like cross-country running. In 2011, she took up the activity again after a 16-year hiatus.

“For me, figure skating is so much,” she says. “It’s my creative outlet where I get my stress out and find a little peace of mind. And it also keeps me in good shape.”

Next month, Drozda will compete in the Adult Eastern Sectional Championships in Wayne, NJ, where she’ll perform to a classical version of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone.”

Shirley Loedbl of Queens takes a whirl around the Rockefeller Center rink.Christian Johnston

Like Drozda, Esposito was also a competitive figure skater in his youth. After an 18-year break, he ventured back onto the ice in 2013. He’s now training to pass a series of formal figure-skating tests, determined by the ruling ice-skating authorities and involving set maneuvers like flying spins and footwork patterns, after which he plans to start competing on the amateur circuit.

“It’s hard to explain, but I woke up one morning and thought, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ ” he says.

“Ice-skating had always been my passion, my art, and I wanted to reignite the spark.”

The Soho resident is so dedicated to his skating that he quit his day job at a special-needs school in Brooklyn in 2013 to make more time for it. He now works as a freelancer so he can spend up to five hours per day training on the ice.

When they’re skating just for fun, both Esposito and Drozda say they get plenty of attention from the less-coordinated masses.

Holistic nutritionist Sally Kravich was an Ice Capades dancer in the 1970s. Now, she skates for the sheer fun of it.Christian Johnston

“People are always coming up, asking if I can coach them,” says Esposito.

Likewise, Drozda says she’s constantly being asked to demonstrate her so-called Nancy Kerrigan-spiral — one foot on the ice, hand grasping the knee and the other leg extended behind — by excitable tweens who can’t get enough of her graceful techniques.

“Yes, there are definitely some crowd-pleasing moves,” laughs the Williamsburg resident.

Not all of New York’s ice kings and queens have their eyes set on competing like Esposito and Drozda, but they’re still serious skaters.

Lawyer Mary Yelenick, 59, of Midtown East, takes twice-weekly ice-dancing classes at the Rockefeller rink, taught by famous former Olympian JoJo Starbuck, 63, for the pure pleasure of it. She’s been skating at the venue for more than 20 years.

“It requires your full attention,” she says. “You can’t bring your problems from the office or your personal life to the ice.”

Yelenick has bonded with many of the mostly middle-aged and senior ladies in the class, who often draw applause from tourists watching their elegant display. The expert skaters include Sally Kravich, 63, a holistic nutritionist in Midtown. Kravich spent four years in the 1970s as a showgirl with the legendary Ice Capades touring company before landing an ice-dancing gig on the “Donny and Marie” TV show.

Professional dancer Andrea Steiner comes to Central Park to work on her jumps and spins. “I get better and better every time I get on the ice,” she says.Christian Johnston

She left showbiz to raise a family, but got an urge to get back on the ice last year. “I thought, ‘I need to bring joy back into my life in my 60s,’ ” says Kravich. “I got in touch with [fellow former Ice Capades dancer] JoJo on Facebook and she told me about her classes in New York.”

Another skater, Shirley Loedbl, never once lost her passion for figure skating and has been involved in the sport ever since she was a little girl growing up skating on the frozen ponds of Westchester County. She’s now a grandmother who has been drawing her Social Security check for quite some time, but her advanced age hasn’t kept her off the ice. (She won’t reveal her exact age because she doesn’t want her ice-dancing partners to worry about her safety.) Every week, the retired UN administrator, of Kew Gardens, Queens, takes three one-hour private lessons at City Ice Pavilion in Long Island City with coach Gary Palmer.

“I’ve always loved ballroom dancing and sports, period,” says the daredevil, who still attempts lifts with some of her male partners.

She maintains that ice-skating improves her posture — a benefit to which professional dancer Andrea Steiner can attest after four years of freestyle training at Chelsea Piers and Central Park’s Wollman Rink.

“I am working on my jumps and spins and getting more and more confident,” says Steiner, of Columbus Circle. “I am better and better every time I get on the ice. Plus, I love the fresh air.”