The European Championships started yesterday with the ladies and pairs short programs. Today, the dance event begins with the short dance. Hence, let’s take a look at the most prominent couples in this competition. 1st: Being two times European and world champions, Gabriella and Guillaume are the front runners to get the gold medal. This season, they have only lost to Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, which are not present here. In fact, their main competitors are North American teams, which causes little doubt that they will be the winners, being, in my opinion, light years ahead of any of the other partnerships in this competition. However, it will be interesting to see what changes did they make to both their short and free dances, since they are playing catch-up to the Canadian team. The scores they get here will have to make a statement that they will be going to worlds to win, so great performances from them are to be expected. 2nd: The World Champions of 2014 did not have a great start of the season, mainly because they encountered Virtue/Moir and Chock/Bates in Skate Canada and both Virtue/Moir and Papadakis/Cizeron in the NHK Trophy, missing the grand prix final. However, they had enough time to improve both dances. Moreover, their free dance is endearing, receiving a great deal of support from the audience. They will be battling the silver alongside Bobrova/Soloviev. The reason I put they first is because, even if they fall behind in the short dance, I’m expecting them to move ahead in the free dance. 3rd: This team won the Russian Nationals again, being the first in line to place well at Worlds. As a result, they will want to score higher than their best achieved at the Rostelecom Cup this season. However, falling short of this in the Grand Prix Final may pose a question mark as to how they will do here. Having improved a lot since the beginning of the season, they are going to make it difficult for the Italian team to get the silver. 4th: Another team with great progress this season, Stepanova/Bukin will likely get the fourth place here. This is a team to keep an eye on. After all, they are the second Russian team and they have been getting better and better scores. They still have a lot to improve, but the speed with which they perform each element is quite impressive, aiming at getting higher grades of execution. 5th: This is a risky prediction, putting them in front of Sinitsina and Katsalapov. Nevertheless, the latter got the place here in a non-incontestable way. If you ask me, Ilinykh/Zhiganshin would likely do better here. This Italian team has been proving its value, with a fantastic free dance last season and great programs this season, showing how versatile they are. If they manage to get great levels in their elements, they will likely end up in fifth. 6th: Another team that got good results this season, Tobias and Tkachenko have two very different programs that are worth watching. Even though the free dance is set to the same tune as Guignard and Fabbri, they are quite different. The Italians got a better result at Skate America, and I am expecting the same to happen here. 7th: Having a not so great season, barely making it to this year’s Europeans, this Russian team wants to prove that the federation should send them to World instead of Stepanova/Bukin. Even though that seems highly unlikely, we never know. Moreover, they want to prove they are a force of Russian ice dance, proving the choice of sending them and not Ilinykh/Zhiganshin to be the right one. While Sinitsina is quite good in the short dance, having surprising me with a great midnight blues, the free dance did not have, until now, the perfection necessary to get solid results. Let’s see how much better did they become since Nationals. 8th: This Polish team has been impressing me throughout the season. While I love the Danish team better, I think the Polish will be ahead. But, who knows, I might be surprised. 9th: As much as I want them to place higher, they will have to nail their levels in the short dance, as they did in the Autumn Classic, and that they have not been able to repeat since. That being said, it is a quite entertaining and lovely short dance and they have a fantastic free dance. If they manage to get their levels, who knows, maybe they place ahead of Sinitsina/Katsalapov (a little delusional, I know). 10th: This will likely not happen, but I decided to risk it and predict that the second French team in the Nationals will close the top ten. Why? I really like their skating quality and they have been showing promise. If they manage to connect more with each other during their programs, they may end up higher than expected. So, I guess placing them here is not that farfetched as it may seem. They actually may be close to this placement. Other teams to watch:
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Predicting the podium of the US Nationals was easy. Nevertheless, the order of the teams could have been predicted based on a coin toss, as any of the teams could have won gold. Even though Maia and Alex Shibutani were the defending champions, nothing could guarantee that they would repeat as winners. All in all, the results might have been the same of last season for the top three, but this was a fantastic competition to watch, with the exception of the tremendous bad luck that Hubbell and Donohue but, especially, Hawayek and Baker had. Here are the full results: 9. Charlotte Maxwell/Ryan Devereaux – Total of 139.20 points
10. Elicia Reynolds/Stephen Reynolds – Total of 103.57 points 11. Kseniya Ponomaryova/Oleg Altukhov – Total of 93.29 points Although the field of American ice dance is amazing, the same can be said of the junior teams, which have been the talk of the town this season, with three teams making the Junior Grand Prix Final: Parsons/Parsons, McNamara/Carpenter and Carreira/Ponomarenko. Despite the favoritism of the first two teams, the quality of Christina and Anthony is reality high, so, like in the senior rank, any placement among these teams were possible. Here are the results from the competition: 9. Emma Gunter/Caleb Wein – Total of 115.90 points
10. Elizabeth Addas/Michael Valdez – Total of 108.02 points 11. Lydia Erdman/Alexey Shchepetov – Total of 106.31 points 12. Cassidy Klopstock/Jacob Schedl – Total of 96.20 points Canadian Nationals were highly anticipated worldwide. Expectations that Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir would win their seventh title became a reality. On what concerns silver and bronze, Weaver and Poje edged out Gilles and Poirier for the second highest place of the podium.
The full results of the competition can be seen below: Recently, keeping up with the juniors has become much easier due to the live streaming of the Junior Grand Prix series on youtube. As a matter of fact, I have been paying a little attention since last season, so I knew that on what concerned the Canadian Junior Nationals, Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha would be the winners. The question was only what would be the margin they would have for the other teams. Other teams that competed at the Junior Grand Prix were Ashlynne Stairs/Lee Royer, Danielle Wu/Nik Mirzakhani, Olivia Han/Grayson Lochhead and Alicia Fabbri/Claudio Pietrantonio. I was particularly impressed with Fabbri/ Pietrantonio, so I was looking forward to seeing how well they were going to do here.
As the best teams are usually the ones sent to the Grand Prix Series, there was no surprise to see that out of the top five, there is only one team not mentioned above: Valerie Taillefer/Jason Chan. Here is the result of the fifteen teams that took part in the competition: The Grand Prix Final took place in Marseille, France, between the 8th and 11th of December, marking the end of the first half of the season. Relevant names like Weaver/Poje and Cappellini/Lanotte did not make the top six, so making it was already a huge accomplishment for couples like Hubbell/Donohue and Bobrova/Soloviev. However, everyone was in it to get the best placement possible, building momentum for the upcoming competitions.
Predictions ranged from Canadians Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir and French Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron for the gold, with the two American teams of Maia Shibutani/Alex Shibutani and Madison Chock/Evan Bates to be capable of challenging these two teams if they faltered. The results were the following: Between the 25th and 27th of November, the last event of the Grand Prix Series, the NHK Trophy, took place in Sapporo, Japan. This was a highly anticipated event by ice dance fans, as it would be the first time the World Champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, of France, would face the reigning Olympic Silver Medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, of Canada. The outcome of this competition will likely shape the rest of the season, so much attention had been given to it. Furthermore, Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte, of Italy, the 2014 World Champions, were present to try and shake things up. The final outcome was the following: 4. Kaitlin Hawayek/Jean-Luc Baker (USA) – Total of 169.75 points
5. Victoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapov (Russia) – Total of 169.62 points 6. Marie-Jade Lauriault/Romain Le Gac (France) – Total of 149.99 points 7. Natalia Kaliszek/Maksym Spodyriev (Poland) – Total of 147.93 points 8. Anastasia Cannuscio/Colin McManus (USA) – Total of 139.47 points 9. Emi Hirai/Marien De La Asuncion (Japan) – Total of 120.35 points Kana Muramoto and Chris Reed (Japan) withdrew from the competition. In the penultimate event of the Grand Prix Series, the couples taking place in the Final are beginning to secure their spots. In this competition, two teams were looking to do so: Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje and Americans Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani. Weaver and Poje needed a first place finish (due to their third place at Rostelecom), which provided an interesting competition among the top two teams here. On the other hand, there was the debut of Sinitsina/Katsalapov of Russia, who certainly wanted to outshine fellow Russians Stepanova/Bukin and, possibly, have great performance to have a shot at being in the final. The final results were the following: 4. Victoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapov (Russia) – Total of 171.94 points
5. Natalia Kaliszek/Maksym Spodyriev (Poland) – Total of 150.78 points 6. Shiyue Wang/Xinyu Liu (China) – Total of 149.8 points 7. Anastasia Cannuscio/Colin McManus (USA) – Total of 141.17 points 8. Linshu Song/Zhuoming Sun (China) – Total of 130.9 points 9. Hong Chen/Yan Zhao (China) – Total of 117.32 points Alexandra Paul and Mitchell Islam (Canada) withdrew before the beginning of the short dance. |
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