2010 JGP Cup of Austria Preview
Graz, Austria will serve as the host of the third ISU Junior Grand Prix event of the 2010-11 season. Eighteen teams from 14 countries will take the ice in competition for the JGP Cup of Austria. The field boasts no clear-cut favorite as only one team has a JGP medal to its credit. Several have come close to the podium in the past, though, so the fight for the medals may be an exciting battle between a few veterans, as well as fresh faces.
Russians Valeria Zenkova & Valerie Sinitsin won the bronze medal at the 2008 JGP in Mexico, but placed sixth at the JGP Lake Placid in 2009 and were not awarded a second JGP last year. They finished fifth at last year’s Russian Junior Championships. They are joined by compatriots Victoria Sinitsina & Ruslan Zhiganshin, who were the sixth-ranked junior team in Russia last year. They picked up a pair of fifth-place finishes at their JGP events last season. Since they debuted on the JGP scene in 2008, Sinitsina & Zhiganshin have never finished lower than sixth.
France’s Gabriella Papadakis & Guillaume Cizeron head to Austria after a fourth-place finish in Courchevel last month, where they missed the podium by less than one point. This result was a huge leap for the duo after they finished 15th in their JGP debut in Lake Placid last season and 22nd at the 2010 World Junior Championships.
The U.S. is sending Charlotte Lichtman & Dean Copely, who started their season at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships with a convincing win in their free dance group. This year’s free dance is a a fun program to music from the motion picture Beetlejuice, the follow-up to last year’s well-received Charlie Chaplin program. The team finished fourth at the 2009 JGP in Zagreb and eighth in a tightly-contested junior dance event at the 2010 U.S. National Championships in Spokane. Anastasia Olson & Jordan Cowan were poised to make their JGP debut last season, but a practice accident caused the team to miss the JGP season. Cowan spent the fall recovering from surgery to repair severed tendons in his hand and was back on the ice in time for the team to compete at Sectionals and earn a fifth-place finish at 2010 U.S. Nationals. In the off-season, Olson & Cowan changed coaches and now train in Detroit under Pasquale Camerlengo, Anjelika Krylova, and Elizabeth Swallow. Both U.S. teams are in their final year of junior eligibility.
The enchanting Khong siblings, Edrea & Edbert, are the lone Canadian entry in Austria. The Khongs earned the assignment after strong finishes at Minto and Thornhill, two of Canada’s most important summer competitions. They won the silver medal at the novice level at the 2010 Canadian National Championships and are coached by Andrew Hallam and train at Toronto’s Cricket Club. At 13 and 15, they are two of the youngest — and tiniest — competitors on the JGP series this season, but they pack a lot of poise into their small frames. A pair of teams who are senior national champions of their respective countries are competing in their final JGP series. Ramona Elsener & Florian Roost of Switzerland finished 27th at the 2010 World Junior Championships, while Nikola Visnova & Lukas Csolley of Slovakia finished 22nd. With the European Championships taking place in their home country in January, Elsener & Roost will look to make a splash in Graz to start their season. Irina Shtork & Taavi Rand ended their partnership in 2008, but re-teamed for the 2009-10 season and represented Estonia at the 2010 Winter Olympics, where they finished 23rd. The team is competing in their fourth season on the JGP and will look to improve upon their best JGP finishes, a pair of 10th-place rankings in 2007.
Baily Carroll & Peter Gerber, Canadians who skate for Poland, are the only team doing back-to-back events. They finished 10th a few days ago in Romania, where they received level 4s on all their lifts and the spin. They struggled with their twizzles in both programs and lost points on the Viennese Waltz section of the short dance, when both patterns were called only level 1. Having that vital feedback — plus the lack of jetlag — could definitely push them up in the standings in Austria. Carroll & Gerber were fourth at last year’s Canadian Junior Nationals in a stacked novice field.
Other teams on the roster include Hanna Asadchaya & Sergei Plishkin of Belarus, Jana Cejkova & Alexander Sinicyn of the Czech Republic, Sofia Gassoumi & Amaud Pasztory of France, Maria Der & Daniel Majer of Hungary, Ksenia Pecherkina & Aleksander Jakushin of Latvia, Teressa Vellrath & Aleksandr Pirogov of Lithuania, and Ukrainians Alexandra Nazarova & Maxim Nikitin and Maria Nosulia & Evgen Kholoniuk.
Unlike the previous two JGPs, Cup of Austria features a pairs competition, so the schedule is different from Courchevel and Brasov. Ice dancing will get underway with the short dance on Thursday and the free dance will be contested on Friday. JGP fans across the world can watch the competition live on the event website: http://www.jgp-austria.com/.