A couple weeks ago, I had a chance to go to Lake Placid, NY, to cover the 2022 U.S. International Figure Skating Classic. The competition turned out to be pretty exciting, with Ilia Malinin making skating history by landing the first quad Axel. It was my first time visiting Lake Placid–a small town that has …
“I have mixed emotions,” coach Bruno Marcotte confessed Thursday night, after his students Riku Miura, 20, and Ryuichi Kihara, 29, won the silver medal at the ISU World Championships in Montpellier, France. Seeing Miura/Kihara reach the World podium–less than three years after they first teamed up–was exciting. However, Marcotte also knows that his team is …
Continue reading Bruno Marcotte: “Miura/Kihara are very special”
The past week’s events in figure skating have almost rendered predictions pointless. Because who could have predicted that the biggest Olympic women’s favorite in recent memory would have a positive drug test days before her individual event? Or that she would be allowed to compete, despite this? Or that we would witness today’s bizarre spectacle, …
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 …
It’s hard to believe that another Olympic season is here already. Thanks to covid-19, the last four years have been unlike any other quad in figure skating. The sport saw the unprecedented cancellation of the 2020 ISU World Championships at the start of the pandemic, then a truncated 2020-21 season that ended in a World …
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 …
Continue reading Drew Meekins: “Pairs skating is ready for a rebrand”
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 …
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 …
The post-Olympic World Championships is often an intriguing mix of the old and the new in pairs skating. This year was no exception. Veteran pair Wenjing Sui/Cong Han won their second World title in stunning fashion, followed by Russians Evgenia Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov, who claimed their third World medal in as many years. However, newer pairs …
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. …
Continue reading Denney/Frazier: “We’re motivated to get to work” in off-season
