Winnipeg pairs skaters finish third at Junior Grand Prix Final

Pair skaters Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov were as prepared as they could be in their quest for gold at the Junior Grand Prix Final in Japan this past week, but the jumps just wouldn’t fire for Kemp on competition ice.

Everything else — the lifts, the throw jumps, the spins, the footwork, the death spirals — was of high quality, but falls on the three solo jumps over two programs relegated the Winnipeg duo to the third step on the podium in Nagoya.

“We have mixed emotions,” Kemp said after their short program on Thursday.

“For sure we had some elements that were really nice. Obviously, the (double) Axel makes me mad. I thought I would land it. I think that we made progress and improvements in other areas and we really wanted to show that.”

Still, just one point separated the three top-ranking couples with Kemp and Elizarov slotting third behind two Chinese pairs after Day 1 of competition. The Winnipeggers were fully capable of moving into gold medal position with a solid free skate like those they had delivered earlier this season.

It was not to be.

Frustration was written on Kemp’s face again on Saturday after she failed to execute a triple salchow combo and toe loop in their Clair de Lune long program. Because the judges score the most flawed element executed by one of the partners, those errors cost them at least eight points on the technical side of the equation.

“I am quite disappointed in myself. I didn’t do my job. I think we cannot skate great all the time. We had some really good skates this season,” said the former Skate Winnipeg athlete, now training in Toronto.

“I am quite disappointed in myself. I didn’t do my job.”

“I felt pretty confident going in. We’re not used to skating first (right after the warm-up). We had a shorter warm-up for the long (due to the start order.) I had to get into my legs. I felt that I wasn’t in my legs. I felt like it got better as the program went along.

“We’re disappointed with our free skate today; we expected much better. Still, we made it onto the podium, so it’s encouraging to win the bronze medal,” Kemp said on Saturday.

In the final accounting, Chinese pairs claimed gold and silver with the winners Rui Guo, 14, and Yiwen Zhang, 18, wowing the 8,000 fans with a high-flying, rarely performed quadruple twist lift and two soaring throw triple jumps.

The gold medallists, coached by 2010 Olympic pairs champion Hongbo Zhao, earned a total competition score of 177.05.

Kemp and Elizarov tallied 166.46, 13 points shy of the personal best they had posted earlier this season.

The Winnipeggers were, in fact, the top-ranked junior pair on the Grand Prix circuit. Their wins in Latvia and Turkey heightened expectations for the Final — exclusive to the six best teams in the world.

Leading into this competition, the reigning Canadian junior champions knew they had a very good chance to medal. The key for them was to understand that pressure and deal with it successfully.

The junior pairs event was a two-country match-up between Canada and China.

“It was kind of cool — Team China versus Team Canada. It was pretty cool being on the ice with them and competing against them,” Elizarov noted.

Canada’s two other pairs that qualified for the Final finished fourth and sixth.

Kemp, 17, and Elizarov, 22, first appeared on the international scene in 2022. The won silver at the 2023 Junior Final and then missed the entire 2024 Grand Prix season due to injury.

They are excited to be back competing at full strength this year, and to graduate into the senior competition ranks both nationally and internationally.

“It was kind of cool– Team China versus Team Canada. It was pretty cool being on the ice with them and competing against them.”

At the Canadian championships in early January, Kemp and Elizarov will compete for the first time against 2024 world titleholders Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, the three-time national champions.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were in Japan for the senior Grand Prix Final this week, but subpar performances translated into a sixth-place finish among the global elite who will battle for the Olympic podium two months from now in Milan.

Meanwhile, Canada’s twice world silver medallist ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier missed the podium in Nagoya by a mere .06 points.

Among the six Team Canada entries at the junior and senior Final, only Kemp and Elizarov will be tucking medals into their luggage for the trip home. Their bronze medals come with US$6,000 in prize money.

All junior competitors also receive a US$2,500 participation bonus.