Around the World of Ice Dance Blog #3
Photo by Europe On Ice
The last several weeks have been very busy in the skating world, with several national championships as well as the European Championships. IDC was lucky to have correspondents and/or photographers at all three. While Melanie Hoyt headed to Moncton, New Brunswick, for the Canadian National Championships, I set out for San Jose, California, host of the 2012 U.S. National Championships. Hiro & Sean from EuropeOnIce.com provided photos from Euros for us. For more on Canadians and U.S. Nationals, please visit our event websites:
Short dance continues
The chatter around U.S. Nationals was that the Yankee Polka (senior) and Blues (junior) are the pattern dances to be included in the short dance for next season. The polka can be combined with a waltz or march, while the blues can be combined with jive or hip-hop. I’m waiting for more concrete information, so for now, this is just food for thought.
European Championships Re-cap
While I was busy in San Jose, the European Championships were being contested halfway across the world in Sheffield, England. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I was able to keep up with the results.
After a few surprises in the short dance which included Ekaterina Bobrova & Dmitry Soloviev taking the top spot over Nathalie Pechalat & Fabian Bourzat and two medal favorites sitting in sixth and seventh, some reshuffling happened in the final result. Pechalat & Bourzat won the free dance and their second consecutive European title, scoring 164.18 to Bobrova & Soloviev’s 160.23. Elena Ilinykh & Nikita Katsalapov climbed from seventh to third, scoring 153.12, edging out Italy’s Anna Cappellini & Luca Lanotte who scored 153.09 and moved up from sixth to fourth, their highest finish at a European Championships to date. Though the Italians had a higher technical score, their program components were lower than the Russians’ PCS. The third Russian team, Ekaterina Riazanova & Ilia Tkachenko, finished fifth and less than one point from the bronze. Fourth in the short, Penny Coomes & Nicholas Buckland (pictured) dropped to sixth after the free dance, but still improved eight spots from last year’s 14th-place finish and did a great job closing the event for the home crowd. Coomes & Buckland set a new personal best score of 145.31. Isabella Tobias & Deividas Stagniunas, who were fifth after the short dance, dropped to ninth overall.
Russian Junior Nationals
2011 JGP Final champions Victoria Sinitsina & Ruslan Zhiganshin continued their winning streak this season, scoring 158.23 and taking the top spot in Novogorsk. Finishing 2.5 points back, Alexandra Stepanova & Ivan Bukin took the silver. In a bit of a surprise, Valeria Zenkova & Valery Sinitsin claimed bronze over Anna Yanovskaya & Sergey Mozgov. Yanovskaya & Mozgov won the silver medal at the JGP Final in December, while Zenkova & Sinitsin were second alternates. The former also took the gold at the 2012 Inaugural Youth Olympic Games. The point spread between third and fourth was fairly wide, 142.30 to 136.41. The Russian Federation has not yet named the team for the World Junior Championships.