Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i International Figure Skating

The Secrets of the Ice “A really enjoyable book that provides an insight into skating history in a part of the world that previously was hidden and very little was known about. Though we saw the people that Alexei speaks about in this book, we did not have any context as to what they meant to the Soviet/Russian figure skating system. Now we have some context. If you love the sport and the people who have helped build it globally, you want to give yourself some time to read the words of an extraordinary man! What a joy!” AVAILABLE NOW! @ifsmagazine.com (eBook Format) Print edition available November 2021…

Loena Hendrickx continues to build on the success she enjoyed last season, which concluded with a fifth-place finish at the 2021 World Championships. The native of Belgium opened her 2022 Olympic season with a fourth-place finish at Finlandia Trophy in October. Three weeks later, Hendrickx competed at her first Grand Prix, Gran Premio D’Italia, where she shocked the world by finishing in first place ahead of Russia’s Maiia Khromykh and Anna Shcherbakova in the short program. It was the first time Hendrickx had ever won a segment at a major international competition. “It was a weird feeling because it was the first time I had to skate on my birthday, so I wanted to do the best I could,” said Hendrickx, who turned 22 on the day of the short…

The journey to the top has been fraught with injury, disappointment and scattered success. But Vincent Zhou is looking ahead to brighter days after a successful first half of the season. Following a 25th-place finish in the short program at the 2021 World Championships, a result that precluded him from contesting the free skate — and in turn, securing a third spot for the United States at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games — many wondered what the young American would bring to the table this season. Though Zhou had kept a low profile during the off-season, he was hard at work behind the scenes, determined to bring a better version of himself to the international stages and to be in contention for a place on the 2022 U.S. Olympic team.…

The pairs competition at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games will be a battle from start to finish, with two teams from Russia and one from China going head-to-head in a fight for gold. With the Grand Prix Final cancelled this season, we did not have the opportunity to see the top teams go up against each other, so what will transpire in Beijing is akin to rolling the dice at this time. Of the medal winners in 2018, China’s Wenjing Sui and Cong Han are the only team returning for these Games. The duo won the Asian Open Trophy and two Grand Prix competitions this season, but did not go up against any of the top teams in the world at any of those events. However, given their past history,…

It has been a rapid rise to the top for Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama. In the 2018-2019 season, his first on the junior circuit, Kagiyama did not qualify for the Junior Grand Prix Final nor did he make the cut for the World Junior Championships. The following season he won his first Junior Grand Prix assignment, finished second at the next and was fourth at the Junior Final in Torino, Italy. A month later, the rising Japanese star won the Youth Olympic Games, defeating the two Russian skaters who had placed ahead of him in Italy — Andrei Mozalev and Daniil Samsonov. At the 2020 World Junior Championships, Kagiyama finished second to Mozalev. Moving into the senior ranks the following season, Kagiyama won the 2020 NHK Trophy title in the absence…

In many countries around the world, skaters battled for a place on their respective teams for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, but no nation on the planet came anywhere close to what transpired in the women’s competition at the Russian Championships in late December. The results of the short program took many by surprise, with some of the top skaters faltering and falling behind the young junior stars in the standings. Kamila Valieva drew first to skate in the short and after the last of the 18 entrants had received their score, she was still sitting in first place with an 8.92-point lead. Initially, Evgeni Plushenko’s top junior, Sofia Muravieva, was ranked second, but at the end of the competition a deduction for a late start dropped her score by…

Wesley Chiu, a young Canad-ian star on the rise, is turning heads in his first full season on the international circuit. The soft-spoken Chiu produced a gold medal at a Junior Grand Prix event in Courchevel, France, at the end of August. Three weeks later, he was a bronze medalist at the Series stop in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, where he landed his first quad jump (a toe) in an international competition. “It’s probably one of the best seasons I have ever had so far. I am just trying to keep the momentum going into my competitions later this season,” said the 16-year-old from Richmond, British Columbia. “I was happy about the win (in France), but after that competition there was lots to work on as I made quite a few mistakes…

ANOTHER SWITCH Two-time U.S. women’s champion Alysa Liu made an unexpected coaching change on Nov. 16, two days after returning home from NHK Trophy. The 16-year-old Californian, who had trained with Massimo Scali and Jeremy Abbott in the San Francisco Bay area for 15 months, moved to Colorado Springs to work with Drew Meekins and Viktor Pfeifer. Christy Krall and Eddie Shipstad are also working with Liu to stabilize her jump technique. Her father, Arthur Liu, said his daughter appreciated “both Massimo and Jeremy and I also thank both of them for taking care of her, but I felt she needed more intensity in her training, and the coaches and I were not on the same page as to how that training should be.” NEW ICE DANCE HUB Charlie White,…

With just a few weeks until the 2022 Olympic Winter Games begin, the excitement is building in the skating world. The first half of the season closed out on a high note with Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu returning to competition and dominating the men’s field at the national championships. Across the pond, Kamila Valieva won the Russian Championships with a mile to spare. We will see both of these athletes taking the ice in Beijing with Hanyu’s sights set on claiming a third Olympic crown and Valieva her first. As the Grand Prix Final was cancelled this season, we did not have the opportunity to see the top guns go up against each other. The Japan Federation only gave the International Skating Union (ISU) notice that it was cancelled a week…

When Boyang Jin captured back-to-back bronze medals at the 2016 and 2017 World Championships, the Chinese Skating Association had good reason to believe he was on track to bring home a medal from the 2018 Winter Olympics. That belief was reinforced by his victory at the Four Continents Championships just weeks before those Games began. But Jin finished fourth in PyeongChang, missing the third step of the podium by 7.47 points. A month later, he finished 19th at the World Championships. In the two full seasons since then, his results have been an up and down affair. At the 2021 World Championships, China was aiming to earn two men’s spots at its home Games. But that plan was foiled after Jin had the worst outing of his career, finishing in…

In the fluctuating realm of Russian women’s skating, Anna Shcherbakova was the top gun the past two seasons, and seemed on track to be the one to beat at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in February. But all that changed in 2021 with a new crop of juniors making their debuts in the senior ranks. Shcherbakova, the reigning World champion, entered this season with a fresh perspective and took the approach that “everything is new; a new season with new competitions, and it does not matter what happened before. “In Russia, we have so many skaters at a very high level so every year, every competition you need to show your place,” Shcherbakova said. “I can’t think that I am already a leader. I am in the same place as…

Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu was forced to miss the first half of the international season after suffering a right ankle injury in early November. It created a scenario that was almost a direct replay of what transpired in the 2017-2018 season, when he was forced to withdraw from his second Grand Prix event and did not compete at the All Japan Championships. Nonetheless, as the reigning Olympic champion, he was named to the team that would compete in South Korea. Four years ago, many questioned how dominant he would be at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang after not competing for three months. But Hanyu answered those questions, and all doubts were erased in an imperious fashion when he stood atop the Olympic podium for the second time, rewriting the…

The spring and summer of 2021 marked a time of major change for the Russian pairs team of Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov. After splitting their training between Marina Zoueva in the United States and Maxim Trankov in Russia the past two years, the duo moved to work full-time with Trankov and Eteri Tutberidze’s team in Moscow. It has been a roller-coaster ride for Tarasova and Morozov the past four seasons. Since winning back-to-back European titles in 2017 and 2018, and silver medals at the World Championships in 2018 and 2019, they have faltered at major international competitions. At the 2018 Olympic Winter Games Tarasova and Morozov sat in second following the short program, but errors in the free left them in fourth place overall. As with all athletes, this…

The All Japan Championships is a tough competition in any year, but even more so in an Olympic season, as it serves as the qualifying event for those looking to book a ticket to an Olympic Winter Games. This year was no different, with many skaters vying for the opportunity to represent Japan in Beijing in February. As always, the men’s competition was the marquee event, but it was even more so this year with Yuzuru Hanyu making his first appearance since the 2021 World Team Trophy eight months earlier. No one knew what the 27-year-old Japanese superstar would bring to this competition, but as always Hanyu arrived well prepared. The Sendai native won the short program with 111.31 points over Shoma Uno and Yuma Kagiyama, and headed into the…

former Canadian pairs skater Lubov Ilyushechkina married the love of her life, Dean Harrison, in an intimate family setting on Oct. 23. For Ilyushechkina, it has been a whirlwind since Harrison proposed on Thanksgiving weekend a year earlier. “We got engaged in Montréal. I was not expecting it. Dean said we were going for a walk, and we were walking through the Botanical Gardens when he turned around and got down on one knee and proposed. Dean and his family had made a sign out of big maple leaves that read ‘Marry Me Luba.’ It was so sweet,” she recalled. “The weather was gorgeous, warm and sunny. Dean’s parents and sister were there. It was like my ideal, sweet moment. I was not envisioning my engagement anywhere specifically, but I…

Long before the 2021-2022 season got underway, Jason Brown and his coach Tracy Wilson had set a plan for which competitions he would be attending in the first half of the season. They settled on two Challenger Series events along with the two Grand Prixs he would be assigned to. Brown won his first competition, Finlandia Trophy, in early October over Russia’s Mikhail Kolyada and Dmitri Aliev. Two weeks later, he finished second to his teammate Nathan Chen at Skate Canada and in mid-November captured bronze at Internationaux de France, behind Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato. The next competition on the calendar for the 26-year-old American was Golden Spin of Zagreb in early December, which was scheduled to take place the same week as the Grand Prix Final for…

Japan’s Mai Mihara was a star on the rise during the 2018-2019 season, capturing four medals, including gold at the Winter Universiade. But shortly after that season ended, the Kobe native was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, which in turn led to other health issues that prevented her from training or competing. As the months passed, many wondered if Mihara would ever return to the sport. But showing the grit and determination she is known for, she returned to training and made her first competitive appearance in 21 months, finishing fourth at 2020 NHK Trophy. A month later, she placed fifth at the national championships. Mihara opened this season with a win at the Asian Open Figure Skating Trophy, defeating her long-time training mate Kaori Sakamoto by 1.30 points. “From start…

He came. He skated. He conquered. Any doubts about whether Yuzuru Hanyu would be in a position to contest and/or win the All Japan Championships in late December were quickly dispelled after he laid down two outstanding performances, which left his rivals in his wake. Hanyu was scheduled to compete at two Grand Prix events in the fall — NHK Trophy and Rostelecom Cup — but in early November he announced he had to withdraw from the first competition after suffering a ligament injury to his right ankle in training. During that time, he developed esophagitis due to stress and said he was unable to do “anything at all for a month.” When Hanyu withdrew from his second Grand Prix event, many began to wonder whether he would be healthy…

It might well be the safest bet of the Olympic figure skating competition in Beijing. Russian women have been the dominant force on the Grand Prix circuit this season. Skaters from that country won five of six Series events in the fall, the only exception being NHK Trophy in Japan, which had no Russian entries in the field. A series of Russian women swept the podium at Skate Canada International and Rostelecom Cup and produced a pair of medals at each of the other three. It stands to reason, then, that the Olympic champion is almost guaranteed to be someone from that nation, for the third straight Winter Games, following the golden efforts of Adelina Sotnikova in 2014 and Alina Zagitova in 2018. The only question is who the next…

The ice dance competition will be one of the most hotly contested events in Beijing. In 2018, two teams were at the top of the pack and it was a given that either Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir or Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France would emerge victorious. Virtue and Moir triumphed in Pyeong-Chang, walking away with a second Olympic crown. But it was a close race in the end, with Papadakis and Cizeron finishing second by the slimmest of margins (0.79 points). Four years later, it is Papadakis and Cizeron who head into Beijing as the oddson favorites to take the gold. Earlier in the season, there were signs of a possible battle between the French duo and the Russian team of Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov.…

He can see the finish line and knows exactly how he wants to glide across it — head held high with a smile on his face. Sounds easy enough for someone whose resume includes Canadian titles at every level, including two as a senior, and a World Junior crown in 2014. Nam Nguyen has enjoyed his moments of triumph, to be sure. But the 23-year-old’s journey has also been a rollercoaster at times, with those title-winning highs also accompanied by some occasions where the sport — and the circumstances around it — has laid him low. Perhaps none lower than those he has been battling for the past year or so. In a backstage interview at Skate America last October Nguyen announced this would be his final season. When asked…

Lindsay Thorngren hit the skating radar this season, following her success on the Junior Grand Prix circuit. Prior to this season, the American teenager had only one international competition under her belt – a Junior Grand Prix event in 2019 in Gdańsk, Poland, where she finished eighth. After winning the U.S. junior title in 2020, Thorngren was hoping to get two Junior Grand Prix assignments, but that was not the reality when all junior events were canceled that year. THORNGREN BY SUSAN D. RUSSELL Lindsay Thorngren hit the skating radar this season, following her success on the Junior Grand Prix circuit. Prior to this season, the American teenager had only one international competition under her belt – a Junior Grand Prix event in 2019 in Gdańsk, Poland, where she finished…

AN ICON PASSES Legendary Slovak figure skating coach, Hilda Múdra, who was the guiding force behind the career of Ondrej Nepela, passed away on Nov. 22 at age 95. Born in Vienna, Austria, on Jan. 1, 1926, Múdra toured with the Vienna Ice Review before marrying Jozef Múdry in 1947. The couple moved to her husband’s hometown of Bratislava, in what was then Czechoslovakia, and raised two children. Múdra returned to the ice as a coach and shortly afterward took Nepela on as her primary student. Nepela would go on to win five European and three World titles and the 1972 Olympic crown. Múdra continued coaching throughout her life, and though she was forced to hang up her skates in her 80s after falling and suffering a fractured vertebrae, she…