Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2016 i International Figure Skating

The doping scandal in Russia occupied a lot of the world’s attention over the summer, coupled with the problems surrounding the Olympic Summer Games in Rio — and who went and who did not. The information contained in the McLaren Report detailed a sophisticated doping scheme, which has, unfortunately, tainted the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and a number of unnamed skaters from all three sports. We have included an overview of the findings of the report in this issue to give you an idea of what transpired. For the first time in 22 years, the International Skating Union (ISU) has a new president. James Cowling caught up with Ottavio Cinquanta to talk about the highs and lows of his two decades in office and what he hopes to…

Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim are satisfied with how last year played out, but have switched their focus and adopted a different strategy as they prepare for the new season. The 2015 U.S. pairs champions medaled at five of the seven competitions they entered in the 2015-2016 campaign. Capturing a silver medal at Skate America and a third-place finish at NHK Trophy earned them a trip to the Grand Prix Final, where they landed in seventh overall. Nationals did not go quite the way Scimeca and Knierim had hoped, but with a second-place finish they were guaranteed a berth on the World and Four Continents teams. “We had a couple of technical errors at nationals,” Knierim said. “It was not a disaster, but it was not our best and not…

Adam Rippon made history in the junior ranks by winning the World Junior title twice in a row. Though he has struggled to find success on the senior stages in the ensuing years, Rippon believes that he has shaken off the demons of his past and is now on a path that he hopes will lead him to even greater victories. It was a moment Adam Rippon perhaps thought might never come. In seven previous appearances at the U.S. Championships he had had mixed results, with only two silver medals to his credit. But in St. Paul, Minn., last January Rippon left his past far behind him, and, at the ripe old age of 26, captured his first U.S. title. Rippon said that all the pressure he had put on…

COMPETITIVE Bonzo’s Montreux: “I liked that short program a lot (from the 1992–93 season).“ Casablanca: “That program definitely left an impression. People identified with that.“ PROFESSIONAL Rag-GIDON-Time: “I’ve always known that the clown guy would be a friend of mine that I could keep around. And he is. You go to China and they say ‘we want you to do the clown.’” Brick House: “It has come back many times in different ways. I did a boys group number to it when I choreographed the 25th anniversary of Stars On Ice in Canada. I started with my ‘Brick House,’ and then we morphed it into new version for a boys’ number. That was fun.”…

After 22 years at the helm of the International Skating Union (ISU), Ottavio Cinquanta handed the mantle to his successor at the ISU Congress in June. When you took over the ISU presidency in 1994, what was your agenda for figure skating? The most important thing was to increase the number of events to give skaters the possibility to perform a number of times during a season, according to their capacity. This was my idea, my dream. This sounds easy, but it was not because to organize events you need money. And money is not available on trees, you know. You have to get the money through agreements. So to increase the number of events just to give the athletes the possibility to compete was not easy. That was my…

Czech star Michal Březina made some life-changing decisions at the end of last season. He left his long-time coach, Karel Fajfr, and his German training base in June and headed to Los Angeles to work full-time with Rafael Arutyunyan. Březina said a number of factors motivated him to make the move to Southern California. His fiancée, Danielle Montalbano, had relocated to the U.S. and the Czech federation was pushing him to make a coaching change. “I spoke with my coach, and we decided that the best option for me would be to go where there were other skaters to give me more motivation and it would probably be better if I trained in the U.S.,” Březina explained. “Pretty much everyone had left my training venue and it was kind of…

Deniss Vasiljevs is on track to become Latvia’s most decorated skater. In his third season on the junior circuit he claimed silver at both his Grand Prix events, missing a berth at the Final by just 0.38 of a point. He is the first skater from Latvia to ever win a medal on the Junior Grand Prix circuit. Vasiljevs said he felt the pressure at first assignment, which played out in Riga, Latvia, with friends and family in attendance. “It is natural to be nervous before competing, but especially at home because everyone wants to see magnificent skating from you,” he said. “I was very tense. That feeling is very dangerous when you are skating, because it makes you start thinking about your next movements. While you are performing, your…

Last season was a roller-coaster ride for Russian ice dancers Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Solovyev. After sitting out a year as Solovyev recovered from a knee injury, the duo qualified for the 2015 Grand Prix Final and five weeks later claimed bronze at the European Championships. But what happened next caught the five-time national champions completely off guard. In early March, the International Skating Union (ISU) notified Bobrova that the banned substance meldonium had shown up in a drug test she underwent in January and that she was under immediate suspension. Unable to compete at the World Championships, it was game over for the season. Bobrova said she was shocked when she learned that she had failed a doping test at Europeans. “My first thought was that it could only…

Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim married in an intimate setting on June 26 at The Lodge at Flying Horse in Colorado Springs, Co. Scimeca chose a princess-style gown with a beaded bodice and layers of chiffon for her special day. A dainty tiara, given to her by her mother, completed her elegant ensemble. Their coach, Dalilah Sappenfield, officiated at the wedding. “There is no one who has had a bigger impact on Chris and I than Dalilah. She not only brought us together but she has kept us together through the hard times,” Scimeca said. Following the ceremony the couple and their 135 guests dined on chicken and salmon. The three-tiered wedding cake, a mix of lemon-raspberry and chocolate, was topped with tiny replicas of Scimeca, Knierim and their pets.…

It was a year of ups and downs for Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier but last season closed on an unexpected high note for the Canadian ice dance duo. An email from the International Skating Union in May confirmed a rumor Gilles, Poirier and their coaches — Carol Lane, Juris Razgulajevs and Jon Lane — had heard during the 2016 World Championships. At its annual spring conference, the International Skating Union’s (ISU) Ice Dance Technical Committee had adopted a proposal that the repeating steps Gilles and Poirier had woven into their short dance last season be considered for a new pattern dance. “One of the new elements of the short dance is called a partial step sequence and essentially, you just make up your own. One of the goals is…

Mirai Nagasu learned last season that it is not over until it is really over. Following a silver medal finish at Four Continents in February, her highest result at that event to date, she had closed the door on her 2015-2016 season. A fourth-place finish at U.S. nationals had left her off the World team and Nagasu was planning to take it easy for a few weeks before gearing up for next season. But in mid-March her coach, Tom Zakrajsek, advised her to get back on the ice and start working on her programs. “A lot of people came to visit and to monitor me and they told me that I needed to start training,” Nagasu recalled. “I had not heard that anyone was injured, but I said OK. A…

For almost four decades Kurt Browning has been entertaining audiences around the world. Few have thrived under the global spotlight as an amateur and professional artist more than the kid from Caroline. Browning, who turned 50 in June, might be slowing down but he is not ready to hang up his skates just yet. Growing up in rural Alberta, far removed from the hustle and bustle of a major city, Kurt Browning had no idea that he was destined to become a globetrotting superstar and one of the world’s most respected artists on ice. Blessed with a natural talent and a fierce competitiveness, Browning was the complete package with his natural jumping ability, head-spinning footwork, and an artistic flair that put him on different level than any of his rivals.…

Akiko Suzuki, 31, announced her engagement on June 13. The Japanese star’s future husband is a former classmate that she first met in grade school. The Nagoya natives reconnected last year when her fiancée dined at the restaurant owned by Suzuki’s father. Scotland’s Sinead Kerr and Grant Marshall tied the knot in a formal ceremony at Dalhousie Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 31. Kerr, 37, met Marshall, 43, a former national league ice hockey player, when they were teamed up as competitors on the Canadian production of “Battle of the Blades” in 2013. After a 10-year courtship former U.S. ice dance competitor Kimberly Navarro married Mark Freeman in an informal ceremony in Ketchum, Idaho on May 28. Navarro wore a full-length, fitted white lace gown, embroidered with red daisies…