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The most important competition of the season took place in Helsinki between March 29th and April 2nd. While the podium may have ended up as most people predicted, as well as the teams present in the top ten, there was a great deal of unpredictability in how these results came about. All in all, it was quite an exciting event. Here are the results: The most important competition of the year, the World Championships, begin on the 29th. However, the short dance takes place on the 31st of March, with the free dance happening on the 1st of April. Predictions of this event where extremely hard to come up with, since the field is deep and anything can happen. Virtue and Moir are chasing their 3rd World Title, but so are Papadakis and Cizeron. Many medalists are present, like Maia and Alex Shibutani, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje or even the 2014 World Champs Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte. Here are my predictions:
Other couples to watch:
There are a couple of other couples I will be keeping an eye on. Starting with Guginard & Fabbri and Tobias & Tkachenko who may challenge the top 10. Also, I am extremely curious to see how well will the Spanish team of Olivia Smart and Adria Diaz place. Moreover, I really like the programs of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen of Denmark, particularly their short dance. The Chinese team of Shiyue Wang & Xinyu Liu is another one to keep an eye on, and so is the Korean team of Yura Min and Alexander Gamelin. The second French team of Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac is another one to watch: they have an amazing skating quality. Additionally, the Turkish team of Alisa Agafonova & Alper Ucar has been having great results this season. Lastly, I have really liked the British team ever since the Lombardia Trophy, so I will be watching Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson. The European Championships took place between the 25th and the 29th of January. While the winners of the Ice Dance event were the ones expected, it did not come as easily as one might have thought. The podium was easy to guess, even though the distinction between silver and bronze was minimal.
Some surprises were in store for the Russian teams, with the second and third places at Russian Nationals having lower results than expected. For Israel, however, this championships turned out to be quite successful. The results are presented below: 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:The beginning of the 2016-2017 ISU Challenger Series happened in Bergamo, Italy: the Lombardia trophy. There were present seven teams after the initially listed Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte (Italy), Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis (Finland) and Kate Bagnall and Benjamin Allain (France) had been removed. With such a smaller number of teams with most of them unknown, we can say the new figure skating season had a modest start. Hence, I will go through the programs of the top three teams. Without surprises, Italians Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri placed first. Their Short Dance had as main theme the movie Grease. I think it was a fun idea for this season has it matches swing really well. I found that part fun and energetic, which is a good indication since we are early in the season, meaning it will likely get even more upbeat by the end of the season. I would also like to stress that the entrance in the lift is really hard and it looks perfectly in the music chosen. In fact, it was awarded level four. The most negative point I can make is that I think there was something missing in the blues part. In fact, the three step sequences were awarded level three, which shows there is some room for improvement. The twizzles were given level three as well. Still, it was a great debut this season. They earned 63.04 points, which was slightly lower when compared to the score they obtained last year on this competition. The Free Dance is to the Nutcracker soundtrack. I found that they had good speed and interpreted the music well. They only earned levels three and four. I found the curve lift to be really good but it needs to be more assertive next time to be spectacular. I think with the course of the season, it will have to be more eye-captivating. Maybe a change in the costumes will help, as I don’t think they match the music chosen. They earned 99.08 points for a total of 162.12, which was a better score than what at the 2015 Lombardia Trophy.
Great Britain’s Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson placed a surprising second (I thought they would for sure be behind Torn/Partanen but that did not happen). I did not have the chance to previously see their international debut at Lake Placid Ice Dance International but I will sure do it now as I enjoyed both their programs. I had never heard of this partnership before and that is because it is new. In fact, Gibson was a singles skater before. If I had known this team was training in Montreal with Roman Haguenauer, Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, I probably would not have been that surprised about their quality (that technical team also train Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron, Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir and Madison Hubbell/Zachary Donohue, among others). However, being one of their first competitions, I think it would still be surprising. Going into detail, I was really impressed with the fantastic quality of the Midnight Blues pattern, which earned level four (the maximum) and, in my opinion, should have been given some Grades of Execution (they got 0 bonus, which I did not understand). In fact, the technical base value they got was slightly higher than the one of Guignard/Fabbri but then the judges barely gave them any GOEs. I believe this happened because they are new in the scene but they will have to revise that soon if they keep this quality. The same can be said of the program components (they got the 5th market of components and I can’t seem to figure out why as I found that they were really committed to their performance). I think the distance of 10 points they had from the Italians was excessive. They got a total of 53.38 points, being the only team with three out of five elements with level four (all other teams had at most one). Focusing on the free dance, they skated to “You raise me up” by Josh Groban. I really like the curve lift and I think the rotational lift fits really well in the music. Overall, it left a good impression. They had the same technical base value of Guignard/Fabbri, which is a clear indicator of the quality of this team. Having only levels three and four for a new team is really good. For me, it was really positive to see a young couple from Great Britain rising in the circuit. If Penny Coomes/Nicholas Buckland are out this season (Coomes is currently overcoming an injury), I would say we are likely to see them again this season. I have to say that the gap on program components for the Italians was huge. They did have a good score compared to the other teams (which did not happen on the short dance) but I think the difference was larger than it should have been. They received 86.22 points for the free dance, having a total of 139.60 points.
Cecilia Törn/Jussiville Partanen from Finland got the bronze medal. They had their most successful season last year and are certainly hoping to overcome their scores this year. Their short dance is definitely not one of my favorites. I don’t think the music fits well with the pattern dance. Also, I don’t think their execution was the best, which did not help the overall impression (let’s hope it improves, since we are early in the season). The swing part looks more cohesive but it lost some speed towards the end, which is not ideal. However, what I feel they really need to improve is the blues part. They had all level threes with the exception of the Not Touching Midline Step Sequence which received level two, getting 52.14 points. On what concerns the free dance, there is not a nice way to put it but it was definitely not my cup of tea. I don’t think the music helps them in any way. Also, sometimes the fluidity between elements vanishes. I know this will likely be fixed as the season advances. Still, I didn’t like it so I hope in the next competitions I start liking it better. Maybe it was just not quite ready yet. The judges gave them level two on both the circular and diagonal step sequences and they got negative GOEs on the curve lift, so I would start by polishing these elements. They got a score of 78.62 points for the free dance, earning a total of 130.76. If we compare this score with the one they obtained at the 2015 Lombardia Trophy (119.96), we can say they are definitely at a better position now than they were last year. Still, the main difference was the short dance, so I would take some time to improve the free dance.
The season has finally started with the Lombardia Trophy. While initially Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte where supposed to start this competitive season at this event, that turned out not to be the case. Hence, this international event lost some of its appeal, not having highly notorious names. The attention went for Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, who were 10th at worlds last year. Here are the results of the competition: SD - Short Dance; FD - Free Dance Besides these couples, Justyna Plutowska / Jeremie Flemin from Poland were 6th with a total of 114.34 points and Mina Zdravkova / Christopher M. Davis from Bulgaria were 7th with a total of 86.10 points.
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