Injury forces Winnipeg pair out of Challenge, Grand Prix

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2022 (1021 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg pair skaters Ava Kemp and Yoni Elizarov’s dream of a season has hit an untimely speed bump.

Kemp sprained her ankle in a fluke accident during an off-ice warmup, forcing their last-minute withdrawal from Wednesday’s opener at Skate Canada Challenge.

Worse, the 14-year-old athlete has been advised not to resume training until next week, which means their trip to Italy for the Grand Prix Final — where they were to compete against the top junior pairs in the world — is off.

The pair had planned to debut their new, technically-souped-up Cirque du Soleil short program on home ice before departing for Turin on Monday.

“(The injury) is recovering nicely. It’s disappointing, but we’re just going to keep moving on and moving forward with the plan,” said the pair’s coach Kevin Dawe.

While the Challenge event being held at Winnipeg’s Seven Oaks Arena is considered the qualifier for the Canadian championships in January, Kemp and Elizarov, 18, already had the green light to advance given their qualification for the prestigious ISU Final.

Wednesday afternoon, the junior pairs event proceeded without the Winnipeg duo with Regina’s Ashlyn Schmitz, 16, and Tristan Taylor, 20, finishing atop the leaderboard.

The pair is coached by David Schultz who, coincidently, represented Manitoba in the senior men’s event at the 2001 Canadian championships which was the last time Winnipeg hosted a national figure skating event.

Only four junior and seven senior pairs were entered to compete at Challenge, indicative of the discipline’s declining numbers in recent years. Retirements post-Olympics and the pandemic only compounded the problem.

While competitors in all disciplines called it quits during the pandemic when rinks closed for months and competitions were cancelled, pair skating was hit particularly hard, especially at the junior level as restrictions made try-outs for new partnerships nearly impossible.

As a result, all pairs competing here will automatically qualify for the Canadian Championships in Oshawa.

That is also the case for the five senior and 13 junior ice dance couples and 12 senior men who competed Wednesday.

Five other top-ranked men who had been granted byes to the national championship chose not to compete in Winnipeg this week, as did six senior ice dance duos, two of whom are off to Italy for the Grand Prix Final.

The junior and senior pairs, ice dance, and men’s competitions wrap up Thursday.

The women’s events are the outliers when it comes to depth with 32 senior and 38 junior competitors entered. They’ll take over Seven Oaks Arena on Friday with their respective four- and five-hour long events.

Skate Canada Challenge 2022 wraps up Saturday with the women’s free skate finals that will decide which 18 junior and senior competitors qualify for the national championships.