Sometimes the best-laid plans get disrupted by a stroke of fate. That’s what happened to Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman in January at the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Columbus, OH.

McBeath, 29, and Parkman, 25, a brand-new pairs team, got everyone’s attention in the short program at Nationals with their big triple twist and other strong elements. Placing third, McBeath and Parkman looked on target to win a medal at their first U.S. Nationals together.

But then a fluke mischance occurred in practice the next day. While McBeath was landing a double throw jump, her right skate blade suddenly snapped and fractured into two pieces. Both skaters were shocked.

“It’s never happened before,” McBeath said of her blade breaking. “Sometimes you can crack off little pieces of carbon fiber. But this was the actual main part of the blade breaking.”

Fortunately, McBeath was not injured when the blade snapped. But she had to finish Nationals skating on an unfamiliar blade, which is not exactly ideal when landing huge throw jumps and side-by-side triples. McBeath and Parkman hung on to finish the free skate and place 5th overall. 

The duo’s disappointment was clear when we spoke with them afterward in Columbus.

“The sad thing is that we were really ready for this competition,” Parkman said. “I will be honest, I was unexplainably upset.” 

Overall, though, McBeath and Parkman are undaunted.

“It’ll make us stronger,” McBeath said of the setback. “We can call upon this moment if we have some other kind of emergency. Like, okay, what did we learn? That’s what we’ll take from it.” 

Parkman said McBeath’s choice to find the silver lining is characteristic of her overall energy and positivity.

“It’s not possible to stop Katie,” Parkman said admiringly. “It’s just better to not even try.”

That inclination to take chances and embrace the unknown–while hoping for the best–is what helped bring about this unexpected partnership in the first place.

McBeath:  Transitioning to pairs skating

Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman’s paths first crossed in early November 2022 in Sheffield, England. Both skaters competed that fall at the MK Wilson Trophy, an ISU Grand Prix event, with their respective partners at the time, Nathan Bartholomay and Anastasia Metelkina. Metelkina/Parkman placed 4th in Sheffield, while McBeath/Bartholomay were 6th. Yet, unexpectedly or not, both partnerships would soon end.  

McBeath had learned pairs skating with Bartholomay, a 2014 Olympian and five-time U.S. national medalist in senior pairs. She skated singles until 2019, qualifying for four U.S. Championships as a singles skater. But at age 24, she decided to give pairs skating a shot and teamed up with Bartholomay. They trained for a few months with Jim Peterson in Florida, then moved to Irvine, California to work with Jenni Meno and Todd Sand.

“It was super-challenging and super-different,” McBeath said of her transition to pairs. “I couldn’t have had a better partner than Nate to learn with. Because I started from zero, so I needed to learn everything. The first pairs long program I did, I was like, ‘Wait, every element is different?’ There’s lifts, and throws, and jumps? But we took it step by step.”

As a former singles skater, McBeath felt fairly comfortable with side-by-side triples. Learning throw jumps, however, was a whole different ball game, which she described as “terrifying.” 

“I have such an inside timing of my triple jumps that I had to go about throws as a separate element completely,” McBeath explained. “When I was thinking of them as jumps, it felt really funny to have someone around me. I would try to go too soon, or I’d overrotate and go a triple and a half forward. So it was pretty scary at first. Jenni and Todd stayed patient. Todd was actually the one who told me to make it a completely different element. Once we separated it from the jump, and gave it cues to be a different element, it made a world of difference. For any singles skater, that is one of the secrets, I guess.”

McBeath and Bartholomay skated together for three years, fell in love, and became partners off the ice. However, Bartholomay’s long career was starting to take its toll, with elbow and back injuries. 

“His body decided for him, unfortunately,” McBeath said. “Last year at Nationals, everyone knew about his back. He fought through those programs. Prior to that, he’d had surgery on his elbow. So last season was extremely difficult for us. He knew he couldn’t do it the way he wanted to any more. So he said to me: ‘I can’t any more… You need to find someone to skate with.’” 

And with that, Bartholomay stepped away from competition at age 33, while fully supporting McBeath in her desire to continue. McBeath hoped to find a new partner, but had no idea who it would be. That’s when Parkman entered the picture.

Parkman: Russian & Georgian roots, American connections

When McBeath met Parkman at MK Wilson Trophy in November 2022, a future partnership certainly would have seemed unlikely. Parkman was then competing successfully for Georgia.

Parkman did, however, have a prior connection to the United States. He was born in Russia to Russian parents, but his family moved to the U.S. not long after, when he was one-and-a-half years old. As a result, Parkman took his first steps on the ice while the family was living in Seattle, Washington.

“I think I learned English around the same time I learned Russian, or maybe even before,” Parkman said of his childhood.

Later the family moved back to Russia, where he began skating competitively. Parkman represented Russia as a junior singles skater, winning the 2012 Tallinn Trophy gold medal in juniors. 

In 2015, when he was 16, Parkman decided to try pairs. At a height of 6’4½”–very tall for a singles skater–the move to pairs seemed logical. Like McBeath, Parkman found the transition challenging.

“It’s very different. It’s hard,” Parkman said. “I was always watching pairs on TV, and I was like, ‘Hey, it’s not going to be that hard to do a throw, everyone can do that.’ So I was really surprised when I tried, and I realized that it’s not that easy. It was an interesting and new learning process.”

For the next few years, Parkman trained in Nina Mozer’s group in Moscow, which was then at its peak of success, with renowned Russian pairs Volosozhar/Trankov, Stolbova/Klimov, and Tarasova/Morozov all training together. Learning pairs in this environment was both inspirational and instructive. Parkman said the most important thing he learned in Mozer’s group was the “technical base” of pairs skating.

“I was lucky to work with some of the best coaches. And I was skating with some of the most famous Russian skaters. I always had their example in front of my eyes,” Parkman said. “I’m 16 years old, and guys who are going to Grand Prixs, Worlds, and Olympics are skating right after me on the ice. I got to watch their practices, to learn something special from them.” 

Parkman had several different partners during this period, but did not actually compete that often due to injuries and other issues. Therefore, his years with Mozer effectively served as an extended apprenticeship to the sport.

“When you’re new, coming to pairs, the first thing you need to learn is how to lift the girl, how to throw the girl, how to save her, let’s say, in some cases. Because everything can happen,” Parkman noted. “So for the first year or more, it was more about learning [than competition]. Because I didn’t know–or my body didn’t know–how to do that.” 

In December 2020, Parkman paired up with Anastasia Metelkina to represent Georgia, training under coach Vasili Velikov. The federation switch provided increased access to international competitions, and the new team quickly started achieving results. Their 16th-place finish at 2021 Worlds–only a few months after teaming up–qualified a spot for Georgia at the 2022 Olympics. They also won several international medals in fall 2022, including Grand Prix bronze at GP Espoo in Finland. 

However, Parkman’s partnership with Metelkina–and his relationship with the Georgian skating federation–ended soon after that Grand Prix event. He declined to discuss the reasons why. 

“It was a long process, with a lot of stuff going on,” Parkman said of that time period. “It was really complicated.”

In spring 2023, his journey brought him to the Meno-Sand pairs group at Great Park Ice in Irvine. He had met Meno and Sand previously at international competitions. During his first few months in California, Parkman couch-surfed, staying with friends and acquaintances. It took a couple months to find a place of his own, and a new partner in McBeath.  

Joining forces as a new team

McBeath and Parkman decided to team up in May 2023. Both were excited about the potential of the new partnership. But a lot of work lay ahead to truly become a pair and skate as one together.

Adjusting to their height difference was a challenge. With McBeath standing just under 5’1”, Parkman is over a foot taller than her.

“It was hard,” Parkman said. “Because Nate was much shorter than me, and my ex-partner Anastasia was a lot taller than Katie. So the timings were different.”

At first, the only element that seemed to work well was the side-by-side jumps. Then, by June, McBeath and Parkman were able to land throw jumps. 

“We did a crazy amount of work trying to get our timings down,” Parkman said. “Even the side-by-side spins were a nightmare. I think every pairs skating guy will understand me. When you’re changing partners, it’s not like you start everything from zero, but everything feels different. It was like, ‘Oh my God, did I lose everything that I learned all these years? For some reason it was easy before, why is it not working now?’ So it was just [making] adjustments.”

“You already know the foundation of the elements, but you have to make it your own with your new partnership,” McBeath noted.

The couple also had to find a presentation style that worked for them, which didn’t come naturally at first. 

“It was really difficult this season. We changed our short [program] a couple times,” Parkman said. “We changed the music, and almost all the transitions. For this season, we had three different short programs, or maybe two and a half. It was a long process, because we used to skate in completely different styles. It was like trying to find something in the middle, between black and white.”

“As far as style is concerned, Daniil gets me out of my comfort zone, in a good way, because he just puts all of himself into his skating,” McBeath added. “That forces me to be bigger on the ice, which is good. I think now we have more of an idea of what our strengths are. Our power elements are probably our biggest strength, so finding music that lends to that. For the 2024-25 season, we want to make sure we get a really good set of music for both programs that matches us.” 

Off the ice, Parkman has to cope with the logistical aspects of his move, which includes applying to switch federations. He’s grateful to McBeath, Bartholomay, their entire coaching team, and U.S. Figure Skating for helping him get settled.

“It was a huge, huge change for him,” McBeath said. “Here he is, and skating with this new girl, too. Thinking back, it’s absolutely insane. It was a lot, but it was good. I think it helped us foster a really good working relationship, and created a great respect.”

Parkman says he now feels comfortable in his new environment and is enjoying life in America.

“I love it very much,” he said. “Yes, there are some differences between here and there [Russia]. But I like it.” 

Parkman has yet to receive his release from the Georgian federation, but the couple are optimistic it will come eventually. 

“U.S. Figure Skating is working on it. It’s out of our hands, out of our control,” McBeath said. “But we know they’re working on it. We’ll just keep skating.” 

Competing together

In November, McBeath and Parkman won the U.S. Pairs Final, a qualifying competition for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. So they had momentum going into Nationals, where they scored 64.21 in the short program, not far behind the leaders, Emily Chan and Spencer Howe. 

“I think we showed, let’s say, 80 percent out of 100,” Parkman said of their short program. 

But then came the totally unexpected equipment failure on the morning of their free skate. Both skaters were stunned when McBeath’s blade broke. 

“I think he turned white,” McBeath said of Parkman. 

“I was really surprised,” Parkman said. “Because that can happen with anyone. But if you would ask me, with whom is this not going to happen, I would say Katie. Because this is probably the person taking the most protection of her skates and other equipment.”

McBeath does not believe the issue was caused by a flaw in the blade.

“In general, the blades are super-strong. I think it was just unfortunate; it was just physics. A one-in-a-million thing. You know, pressure applied to the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. “Our throws are pretty large. I think just the pressure of coming down from the sky–being tossed around–just did it. It wasn’t a brand-new blade, but I still had a good amount of life left in it.”

After the blade fractured, McBeath faced a choice: To withdraw or try to skate the long program on a different blade. For her, the decision was clear. 

“I thought, whatever happens, I just need to show up. Not only for myself, but for my team, which is me and Daniil,” McBeath said. “I just need to get out there, in whatever way I can, and just hope I can do something. That was my mindset: That I’m healthy, and I can skate, and I’m going to do my best to show up for Daniil.” 

The duo competed in the free skate a few hours later. Everything felt a bit off with the new replacement blade, but McBeath pushed through. 

“Adrenaline is a beautiful thing,” she said. “That’s how I was able to get through most of the takeoffs–getting up into lifts and throws. I had a little step-out on the [throw triple] loop, but then the [throw triple] Lutz was fine. With the new blade, I wasn’t quite as ready to make adjustments, or wasn’t as agile. But I just rolled with it.” 

McBeath and Parkman can only wonder how they might have placed at Nationals if not for the freak accident. Still, they’ve chosen to focus on the positive.

“I think it is important to be thankful for life, for the things that are happening to you. Everyone is alive, no one is injured. We just need to learn all the lessons that we had here, in order to show our potential,” Parkman said. “There are some technical issues that you cannot control in life.”

“I’m so thrilled that we’ve learned a lot this season–probably more than I had anticipated for a new team,” McBeath said. “It’s been short and sweet and jam-packed. It’s going to give us a really awesome foundation, and then we can really push our boundaries. And, going forward, I will forever have a backup blade!”

Featured image at top courtesy of Melanie Heaney/U.S. Figure Skating