Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2017 i International Figure Skating

The World Championships are now just a few weeks away. With berths at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games on the line in Helsinki, I expect this competition to be a fierce battle in all disciplines. No one wants to stay home next February and watch the Games on television so earning the highest placement possible will be a top priority for all skaters who compete at Worlds. The World Junior Championships, one of my favorite competitions of the season, will take place in Chinese Taipei in mid- March. Many of these young skaters will be moving up the senior ranks fulltime later this year, and some potentially will be challenging for a berth on their nation’s Olympic teams. We thought it was the perfect time to profile some of the…

Every year Russia produces a new figure skating wunderkind who ends up dominating the junior ladies circuit. This year it is Alina Zagitova, a 14-year-old who trains in Moscow alongside 2016 World champion Evgenia Medvedeva. Zagitova debuted on the Junior Grand Prix circuit in 2016, opening her season with a win at her first event in France. “After that there were a lot of expectations for me but I was a bit too nervous at my second event and I finished third. Nevertheless, I made the Junior Grand Prix Final, which is very honorable,” said Zagitova, who won the event in December. “I knew if I skated both programs clean I could win, because as Eteri (Tutberidze, her coach) said, only girls with a triple Axel can overtake me. I…

The 2017 All Japan National Championships, which took place Dec. 22-25 in Kadoma City, Osaka, had a small setback when four-time national champion Yuzuru Hanyu withdrew before the event began, citing a case of influenza. In his absence, Shoma Uno became the odds-on favorite to claim the men’s title. His campaign did not get off to a stellar start with a second-place finish in the short — a performance marred by a fall and two deductions, one on the opening quad flip and the second on the quad toe combination The free skate was also not without its challenges. The 18-year-old Nagoya native received downgrades on both of his opening quads, and later in the program the second jump in a quad combination received zero points due to repetition. But…

The 2017 U.S. Championships had people on the edge of their seats one moment and scratching their heads the next. ew champions rose to the challenge, while odds-on favorites faltered and fell. Likely no one would have predicted that Karen Chen, 17, would claim first place in the short program. It was not just her placement that took many by surprise — her score of 72.82 was the highest ever awarded to a lady in U.S. skating history. Chen parlayed that energy into her long program, landing six triple jumps, including a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination, to capture her first national title with 214.22 points — the second highest total ever earned by a U.S. lady. Front-runner Ashley Wagner, third after a less than stellar short program, redeemed herself…

With the 2018 Olympic Winter Games less than a year away, Nathan Chen has become one of the most talked-about skaters on the planet. He took men’s skating to new heights at the 2017 U.S. Championships and is considered a heavy favorite to capture a medal at the upcoming World Championships. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, the 10-year-old from Salt Lake City who became the youngest novice champion in U.S. history at the 2010 Championships had already begun to wrap his young thoughts around much bigger goals. Nathan Chen recalled people asking him at that time which Olympics he would be going to. “I said 2018. I just knew it would be the first one I would be eligible to go to because of my age, but…

Two female skaters aged 30-plus returned to the competitive circuit in January. Both had been absent from the scene for more than a decade. It had been 17 years since Deanna Stellato-Dudek stood at center ice at a U.S. Championships. The 2000 Junior Grand Prix Final and 2001 World Junior silver medalist in singles was forced to retire due to recurring injuries at age 17. The now 33-year-old returned to figure skating in 2016, this time as a pairs skater partnered with Nate Bartholomay. The duo placed sixth at Golden Spin of Zagreb in December, won Eastern Sectionals and qualified for the U.S. Championships, where they twirled into fourth place. Across the pond, Zoe Jones, the 2001 and 2002 British singles champion, returned to competition at age 37. She and…

When Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya and Harley Windsor first met at a try-out in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 4, 2015, they could not have imagined that a little more than 12 months later they would be competing against the top pairs teams in the world at the Junior Grand Prix Final in Marseille, France. Separated by culture, language and a distance of over 14,000 km., Alexandrovskaya, who is Russian, and Windsor, an Australian, were teamed up by his coach, Andrei Pachin, through his connection with Nina Mozer. She initially suggested three potential partners for Windsor, but Alexandrovskaya was the only one to try out with him. Windsor competed as a singles skater at domestic events in Australia, and had no previous pairs experience before he teamed up with Alexandrovskaya. He said his…

An unfamiliar face with a very familiar name made her debut at the 2017 U.S Junior Championships in January. Elizaveta Kulik, daughter of two-time Olympic pairs champion Ekaterina Gordeeva and Ilia Kulik, the 1998 Olympic men’s champion, finished in eighth place in Kansas City, Missouri. Though she was hoping for a top six finish, the 15-year-old said, “it’s OK because it was my first time. My short program was a bit disappointing. In practice I was basically perfect, but I guess I just got nervous. The long program was alright — I was pretty proud of what I accomplished in the long run.” Blessed with her father’s smile and Gordeeva’s grace, Kulik, began skating at age 3. At the time, she tagged along with her parents who worked as coaches,…

The city of Chelyabinsk hosted the 2017 Russian National Championships in late December. Located almost 2,000 km (929 miles) east of Moscow, the outside temperature dipped to minus 34 Celsius (-29.2 Fahrenheit) during the week that the competition took place, but that did not dampen anyone’s enthusiasm Despite the frigid temperatures, the fans came out in droves to support their favorite skaters. Mikhail Kolyada was the shining star of the men’s field, easily winning both segments of the competition. Though his free skate was not perfect he was still the best of the day. In the end, it was a runaway victory for Kolyada who captured his first national title with 283.48 points, and put a 23.41 point margin between he and Alexander Samarin, the runner-up, who scored 260.07. Third…

Untold Stories Pain, connection and justice are three of the eight themes covered in the recently released publication “Charm of Ice.” Co-written by Leena Lehtolainen and Kaisa Viitanen, the 200-page hardcover book features photography by Elina Paasonen. Lehtolainen and Viitanen interviewed 80 skaters from around the world, including Olympic and World champions as well as many others who had interesting stories to tell. Many of the skaters were surprised at the in-depth questions that many had never been asked before,” Lehtolainen said. “The international scope of figure skaters and coaches we interviewed offers a kaleidoscopic view of the world of figure skating.” “Charm of Ice” (Jään lumo) was published in Finnish in October 2016 and will be available in Japanese in October 2017. Chic Fashion Former British singles champion Jenna…

It has been a season of top finishes in the junior ranks for Rachel Parsons and Michael Parsons. The siblings have danced to the top of the podium at every event they have contested this season, including the Junior Grand Prix Final in December. In January, the brother-sister duo followed that up by winning their first U.S. title in Kansas City, Mo., overtaking their training mates Lorraine McNamara and Quinn Carpenter, the 2016 World Junior champions, for the first time in their career. The past few seasons we’ve been nipping at their heels and kind of skating in their shadow,” said Rachel, 19. “At Junior Worlds last year, we beat them in the short dance, but fell back after the free. At the Final this season, we ended up ahead…

Four of the six reigning champions who arrived in Ostrava, Czech Republic, to contest the 2017 European Championships retained their titles, with a new team crowned in the pairs discipline — universally applauded as the standout event of this competition. In total, 166 skaters from 33 International Skating Union member nations competed in Ostrava. Only one man in the modern era had ever claimed five consecutive European crowns — Ondrej Nepela, who achieved that feat some 44 years ago, winning his final title in 1973. Javier Fernández entered the 2017 campaign knowing that equaling that record was within his grasp, and seemed determined from the outset to write his own piece of Europeans history. The 25-year-old Madrid native captured the lead with a short program that included two quads —…

The 2017 Canadian Championships kicked off Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations in the nation’s capital in late January. Canada’s top three ladies stole the show in Halifax last season and once again they put their stamp on the 2017 Championships. With only two berths available at Worlds, the stage was set for another fierce battle between Kaetlyn Osmond, Gabrielle Daleman and Alaine Chartrand to land one of those coveted spots. Following the short program that battle appeared to be only for second place, as Osmond set herself apart with a performance that earned 81.01 points — the highest ever awarded for a lady at a Canadian Championships. However, the runaway victory train Osmond appeared to be on in the short program hit a few bumps in the free skate, with falls…

Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov, the 2014 Olympic, European and World silver medalists, were heralded as the heir apparent to the pairs skating throne when Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov sat out the post-Olympic season and Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy split up. But injuries halted Stolbova and Klimov’s progress and the duo found themselves on the verge of quitting the sport. This season, however, they are back in the race and hungry for gold. Stolbova and Klimov fared well on the Grand Prix circuit in the post-Olympic season, and placed second at 2015 Europeans. The following season they claimed the Grand Prix Final title. A month later the duo withdrew from 2016 Europeans so both could heal their injuries. They ended the season with a fourth-place finish at Worlds…

Megan Duhamel and Eric Radford’s decision to drop the throw triple Axel from their short program and replace it with an easier, more secure throw triple Lutz, was based on the point value versus the risk. The Canadian pairs team have become advocates for change to the current scoring system, so that future generations will be inspired to continue to push the sport technically and be rewarded for doing so. You talk about pushing the sport forward, so what is the reason for you making the element change Duhamel: Singles skating went through a time when all the men were doing quads, but a triple flip-triple toe combination was worth more points. So, the men took the quads out of their short and did a triple flip-triple toe. Then the…