When Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir parted ways in 2014, they didn’t expect to ever skate together again. As a pairs team, based at the Skating Club of Boston, they won two U.S. national titles (2013-14) and an Olympic bronze team medal in 2014. But despite their success, Castelli and Shnapir didn’t always get along …
Category: Interviews
Drew Meekins: “Pairs skating is ready for a rebrand”
On first sight, you could almost mistake Drew Meekins for a current competitor in pairs skating (especially these days!). Fit and youthful at 36, Meekins retains an energetic passion for the sport of figure skating. It’s this drive that inspired him throughout his competitive career with pairs partner Julia Vlassov and culminated in the 2006 …
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Getting to Know Olga Ganicheva
Over the last decade, Olga Ganicheva and Aleksey Letov have quietly moved toward the top rank of American figure skating coaches. The husband-and-wife team, who are originally from Russia, started coaching in the Dallas, Texas, area in 2002. There, they built up a skating school based at one of the Dr.Pepper StarCenter rinks in the …
Roman Sadovsky: Figure Skater & YouTuber
The Grand Prix season always seems to bring its share of new stars and surprises. Roman Sadovsky was a bit of both in November, when he unexpectedly won bronze at NHK Trophy. Not many picked the 20-year-old Canadian skater to medal at NHK, which featured an impressive field of men’s competitors, including two-time Olympic champion …
Finster/Nagy: Young Team on the Rise
When Kate Finster and Balazs Nagy began their pairs partnership in late fall of 2017, they were a bit of an unlikely duo. The new partners had a five-year age gap--and also came from different disciplines. Nagy, 20, had been a singles skater for the majority of his career, with only one brief season of …
Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson: Finding Success on Their Terms
Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson are the definition of skating veterans. Both have been involved with figure skating at the elite level for over 30 years, first as competitors and more recently as coaches. Mitchell competed internationally for the United States in the early 1990s, attaining two top 5 finishes at the World Championships, as …
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Interview with Alexander Johnson (2019)
Alexander Johnson is starting a new chapter in his life this spring. After a 9-year career at the senior international level, which featured two top 6 finishes at U.S. Nationals and a Challenger Series medal, Johnson is shifting focus from competitive skating to his first full-time professional job in finance and a budding side career …
Denney/Frazier: “We’re motivated to get to work” in off-season
It was a challenging season for U.S. pair Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier, but it ended well with a silver medal at 2018 U.S. Nationals and a 5th-place result at Four Continents. After Four Continents, Denney/Frazier took a few minutes to speak with me about how their season went and their plans for next year. …
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Walsh/Michaud: “Our partnership has grown a lot this year” (2019)
Following a successful junior career, Evelyn Walsh/Trennt Michaud of Canada made the jump to the senior ranks this year. After some ups and downs at their fall events, the young Canadian team earned the silver medal at Canadian Nationals and berths to Four Continents and Worlds. The duo is focused on learning and growing as …
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Interview with Richard Gauthier (2019)
Recently I traveled to Anaheim, CA, to cover the ISU 2019 Four Continents Championship for Figure Skaters Online. While I was there, I had the great pleasure of chatting with pairs coach Richard Gauthier of Canada. As most pairs fans know, Gauthier has been among the world's top pairs coaches for 15 years or longer, …