Winnipeg skaters take gold at junior Grand Prix competition

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This article was published 29/09/2023 (770 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg pair skaters Ava Kemp and Yoni Elizarov delivered the best performances of their career this week to win gold at the junior Grand Prix competition in Poland and punch their tickets to the ISU Grand Prix Final in Beijing.

Still, they weren’t completely satisfied with their performances.

“I’m happy about (the win), but Ava and I are very analytical and we can always do better,” Elizarov said after the victory Friday in Gdansk.

“Once you have that super good skate and a gold medal, then we’ll be happy.”

Clarifying what a “super good skate” would include, the pair cited adding a second throw triple jump, improved flow throughout their programs and attaining the highest difficulty level on all spins, lifts and footwork.

Despite their success as rookies on the Grand Prix circuit last year, Kemp, 15, and Elizarov, 19, hadn’t dared get their hopes too high this time around considering they had missed months of training time this spring after Elizarov underwent surgery to repair a collapsed lung.

In their first GP assignment last week in Hungary, they struggled uncharacteristically with a subpar opening round. Kemp said they knew that wasn’t what they wanted and that they “had to step it up.”

They did just that with a more solid free skate that lifted them to a fourth-place finish overall in Budapest, then delivered two programs this week in Gdansk that Kemp said they were “pretty pleased with.”

Sitting third after Thursday’s short program but just one point behind the overnight leaders, Canadian teammates Jazmine Desrochers and Kieran Thrasher, Kemp and Elizarov shone in their free skate program in spite of their admitted pre-skate jitters.

“It was much better than last week. I think we had a mental hurdle to jump over and we did it successfully,” Elizarov said.

They scored bonus points for quality execution of every spin, lift and jump — including a throw triple salchow and side-by-side triple salchows. Their total competition score of 159.91 was 10 points higher than their previous personal best.

The Winnipeggers outdistanced the rest of the field by more than eight points, including Ukraine’s 2023 junior world bronze medallists Violetta Sierova and Ivan Khobta. The Ukrainians claimed silver, while Desrochers and Thrasher settled for bronze.

Both couples’ previous podium finishes this season mean they also ranked among the top six pairs who will compete at the Final in China in December.