In recent decades, Finland has taken an ever-greater role in ice skating, hosting major events and fielding successful skaters. Kiira Korpi and Laura Lepisto won medals in women’s singles, Juulia Turkkila/Matthias Versluis are top ice dancers, and of course, Finnish synchronized skating teams have won nine World championships. But pairs skating has not been part …
Continue reading Vaananen/Clerici: “We know we can win and compete at higher levels”
All photos courtesy of Janet Liu For top U.S. skaters, this season started and will hopefully end in Boston, MA. The past few weeks saw several skating events in the Boston area: Cranberry Cup, the season’s first ISU Challenger Series competition; Champs Camp, the U.S. federation’s high-performance training camp; and Summer Sizzler, a show held …
Continue reading Summer Sizzler: Season Preview for U.S. Skaters
Every skater dreams of World and Olympic glory, but for some, it’s more realistic than others. From the outside looking in, it might initially have seemed a long shot that Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson would one day challenge for those podiums when they first teamed up in 2016. At the time, Lilah Fear’s top …
Continue reading Fear/Gibson: “The crowd is part of our team”
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 …
Continue reading McBeath/Parkman: “We learned a lot this season”
Just two years ago, Madison Hubbell was on the podium at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, winning a team gold medal and a bronze medal in ice dance. Since then, Hubbell has married Spanish ice dancer Adrian Diaz and recently gave birth to a daughter, Chloe Diaz Hubbell. She’s also coaching in London, Ontario, with …
Continue reading Coaching for Carreira/Ponomarenko: Madison Hubbell
Winning a first World title was life-changing for Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, according to their coach, Bruno Marcotte. The Japanese team’s triumph at their home World Championships last year was a career high point and opened many new doors. However, when Miura/Kihara returned to training in summer 2023 with plans to defend their title, …
Continue reading Bruno Marcotte: “It’s going to be important for Miura/Kihara to push the envelope”
In figure skating, there are great performances that win medals. And then there are performances that transcend medals to enter the lore and iconic history of the sport. Adam Siao Him Fa had both last month at the 2024 ISU World Championships in Montreal: He won his first career World medal--but it’s how he did …
Continue reading Adam Siao Him Fa: “I want to skate in a way that no one did before”
Last night, Loena Hendrickx won the women's short program at the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships with a new personal-best score. It was a triumph for the Belgian skater--one of many this season, which has seen her winning a Grand Prix event at Skate America and her first European Championships title. And Hendrickx is …
Continue reading Choreographing for Loena Hendrickx: Adam Solya
What happens when you’re an elite pairs skater, you’ve just achieved your biggest success at an ISU championship … and your partnership ends right afterward? It’s a scenario that Alisa Efimova, 24, and Misha Mitrofanov, 26, both faced over the past two years. In 2022, Mitrofanov won the ISU Four Continents Championships with Audrey Lu. …
Jimmy Ma, 28, ended last season brilliantly with a career-high 5th place at the 2023 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and a small medal at 2023 ISU Four Continents Championships, where he placed third in the short program. This season, however, was another story entirely. Ma struggled this past fall, placing a disappointing 9th and 11th …
Continue reading Jimmy Ma: “This is a better representation of who I am as a skater”
