Catching Up With the Juniors... (and a few of the Seniors)

So in the interest of getting back on track, I’ll cut right to it:

Junior Worlds Medalists + Observations…

ICE DANCE
GOLD—Sinitsina/Zhiganshin, Russia
SILVER—Stepanova/Bukin, Russia
BRONZE—Aldridge/Eaton, USA

+ Russia’s Sinitsina/Zhiganshin cap off a great season… 5 gold medals in all on the Junior circuit! Their FD is to Phantom of the Opera (in case that jogs your memory on “which team they are”)
+ Stepanova/Bukin, also from Russia, had a very good season as well: 2 golds during JGP and bronze in the Final, then silver at Junior Nationals and silver here. Their FD is to Live and Let Die
+ Aldridge/Eaton of the USA brought home bronze; their Lord of the Dance FD was apparently their saving grace after being 5th in the SD.
+ But they probably had some help from the fact that Yanovskaia/Mozgov had to stop and re-start their FD to fix a broken bootstrap on Mozgov’s costume.

PAIRS
GOLD—Sui/Han, China
SILVER—Yu/Jin, China
BRONZE—Davankova/Deputat, Russia

+ China’s Sui/Han must be dying to age into the senior level of Worlds by now… this was their third junior title. (Come to think of it, all the other juniors must by dying for them to leave as well.)
+ The USA Junior pairs champs Denney/Frazier (meaning Haven Denney; Caydee is her older sister) finished 4th… pretty impressive considering they could only manage a 7th and 8th place on the JGP Circuit this season.

LADIES
GOLD—Julia Lipnitskaia, Russia
SILVER—Gracie Gold, USA
BRONZE-- Adelina Sotnikova, Russia

+ Russia’s Julia Lipnitskaia, previously dubbed Gumbyskaia by me and surely others, pulled off a sizeable victory with a 15-point margin ahead of the silver medalist…
+… who just happens to be USA’s late-season breakout star (and current Junior ladies champ) Gracie Gold, who ran a tight race with (and stayed just ahead of)…
+…Russia’s Adelina Sotnikova, who actually won this event last year.

Also representing the U.S. here was Christina Gao, who finished 7th… and Vanessa Lam, who placed 13th.

MEN
GOLD—Yan Han, China
SILVER—Joshua Farris, USA
BRONZE—Jason Brown, USA

So there’s a very clear threesome at the top of the Junior Men heap right now, and you’re looking at it: Yan, who took bronze at the JGP Final, Farris, who got the silver at that event, and Brown, who won gold there. Brown remains the one of the three without a triple axel, so when the other two hit their toughest jumps, he tends to come up a little short on overall points. But in any case, these three are consistent and rock-solid at the junior level, and with all three well below the age cut-off, they might be juniors for a while yet… (though Yan has already won his senior national title twice!)

Tim Dolensky also represented the U.S., finishing 12th.

And I don’t know much more yet than they posted in this IceNetwork article, but here are the more notable finishes at the International Challenge Cup taking place over the past few days in The Hague, Netherlands.

MEN
1) Brian Joubert France
2) Jeremy Abbott, USA
3) Samuel Contesti, Italy

LADIES
1) Carolina Kostner, Italy
2) Valentina Marchei, Italy
3) Alissa Czisny, USA

In other words... pretty good day at this event for Italy. More soon!