Winnipeg skater Howes taking talents to Hungary

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This article was published 11/09/2023 (1078 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG figure skater Davey Howes came flying out of the gate in summer training, adding several triple-triple jump combinations to his repertoire to secure his first Junior Grand Prix assignment in Hungary next week.

Meanwhile, pairs duo Ava Kemp and Yoni Elizarov were again rebuilding from injury as he recovered from an unexplained collapsed lung in mid-March, the week after they finished sixth at the world junior championships in Calgary. (Last fall, the Winnipeggers sat on the sidelines for almost two months after Kemp suffered a serious ankle sprain.)

Now, Kemp and Elizarov are slated to join Howes in Budapest, host of the fifth of seven ISU Junior Grand Prix events. The pair will also compete the following week in Poland. (At the time of writing, Howes was not scheduled for a second outing.)

Skate Canada named the trio to its NextGen development team on the strength of notable results last season and their potential to continue on an upward trajectory. Dauphin’s Breken Brezden also impressed to earn NextGen membership, a designation only 13 young women in Canada can claim.

Indeed, it’s been a trying few months for the young duo.

“It’s been really tough. I think our (off-) season training really started in June instead of right after junior worlds. We had two or three months off because I couldn’t do anything because of my lung,” said Elizarov, 20, told the Free Press recently.

After re-inflating his lung, doctors recommended surgery to remove the damaged part of the organ. The surgery happened mid-April.

Following Elizarov’s recovery, he and Kemp, 15, relocated to train full-time in Mississauga, Ont. with coach Andrew Evans, who had worked with the duo on-and-off in the past. The move was necessitated when their longtime Winnipeg coach Kevin Dawe chose to advance his career as a physician’s assistant with a transfer to Toronto. He will continue to coach the pair when possible.

Evans said the post-injury sessions were “like rebuilding from nothing.” He noted that Elizarov was doing solo double jumps by the end of May when they arrived, but not lifting Kemp in any way. That also meant no throw jumps, no twist lifts and only a limited number of death spirals.

“We built up from the basics and are slowly adding on,” Evans said.

Their goal is to have all their high-level, triple-turn elements in their programs come the Canadian championships in Calgary in January and the junior world championships in Taiwan the following month.

Eizarov, who considers himself totally recovered now, said of the upcoming events in Europe, “We don’t really have any placement goals, or to qualify for the (Grand Prix) Final. We just want to skate our best — because we didn’t really have an off-season — and just step back up to the international level, see how we do, trying to match our scores from last year but, hopefully, beat them.”

Coach Dawe’s decision also prompted former student Howes to set up shop in Richmond, B.C., with coach Keegan Murphy.

On the sport’s fast track since winning the Canadian novice title last March, Howes immediately advanced to junior level competition, finishing fifth in his first international meet in Luxembourg last spring.

Howes chose to train in Richmond because of the number of male skaters there, including a few senior level men who compete internationally. He was excited to have his triple-triple jump combos start to click after making the move.

“We knew that was something he had to tackle and he’s made rapid progress,” Murphy said.

“We’ve always known he’s a beautiful skater, but now the quality of his technical elements is also improving, so he’s earning additional points on the quality of his jumps, spins and step sequences.”

Howes was thrilled to rank second at the NextGen team competition in July. “I was not expecting scores that big. Neither was I expecting to place second at a NextGen event after just coming up from novice (level competition.) It was a really exciting moment.”

In Budapest, Howes’ goal is “to put out two performances that show improvement from NextGen content-wise, but also showing that I can cope under international pressure representing Canada at a JGP, while also cope under pressure while adding more difficult elements into the program.”

Howes and Brezden are expected to compete in Winnipeg in late November at Skate Canada Challenge — the qualifier for the national championships. The pair has a bye.

Howes’ primary goal for the season had been to earn a Grand Prix assignment, so mission accomplished before the 2023-24 campaign even began.

“Anything that happens beyond that is: a) out of our control, and b) would just be icing on the cake,” Murphy noted.

That icing could include the Youth Olympics in South Korea in January.