Canadian Figure Skating Championships

It's a busy 10 days for figure skating with superpowers Canada and the USA holding their national championships and the first major international of 2012, the European Championships being held in Sheffield, UK.

The first of these to wrap up was the Canadian championships in Moncton, New Brunswick. Full results here. World Champions Patrick Chan and Virtue and Moir re-established their dominance, winning their umpteenth straight national championships respectively. The upset of the event came when Amelie Lacoste beat fellow Quebecois skater and reigning champion Cynthia Phaneuf to the national title.

Skate Canada has been cautious in naming the single ladies skater who will represent Canada at the world championships in Nice. Canada desperately needs a strong and consistent ladies skater to match up to their stronger men's pairs and dance teams.

As it stands the Worlds teams are listed below (with additional athletes for the 4 Continents Championships in brackets)

Men

Patrick Chan , Kevin Reynolds, (Jeremy Ten)

Ice Dance
Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir , Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje, Kharis Ralph/Asher Hill (Alexandra Paul/Mitchell Islam replace Ralph & Hill for 4CC)

Pairs
Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford , Jessica Dubé/Sebastian Wolfe, Paige Lawrence/Rudi Swiegers

Ladies
The top two finishers from the national championship will compete at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, and Canada's one entry for the world team will be named following their performances at that competition. (Amélie Lacoste, Cynthia Phaneuf, Alexandra Najarro)

 The Novice and Junior rounds of the US championships and the qualifying rounds of Europeans are also underway, I'll endeavour to update on these results throughout the week.

Posts are a bit scarce at the moment as I revise for my clinical exams coming up, keep checking back!

Winter Youth Olympics

With qualification to London 2012 on most people's minds, the upcoming inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck are flying somewhat under the radar.

As with the Singapore youth olympic games 2 years ago, several of the most promising young athletes are using this to build experience for bigger and better things at the next olympic games proper. Amongst those competing in the figure skating competition in Innsbruck are Russian phenoms Adelina Sotnikova and Elizaveta Tuktamisheva. Other names to look out for are Zijun Li of China (pictured, above) So Youn Park of South Korea and Risa Shoji of Japan.

The games kick off on Friday. Click here for the event website.

GB dominant as test event.

They did much more than finish 4th, the British men put in a fantastic team performance to easily win the team competition at the olympic test event and qualify a full team to London 2012- yippee!!

The british men also qualified 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the all around rankings with plenty of high ranking individual apparatus scores too.

GB will be joined by the teams from France, Spain and Italy. The Canadian men will be kicking themselves for lost tenths, finishing narrowly outside in 5th place.

UPDATE: The FIG has today confirmed the men's qualifiers for the olympic games: view the full list here. They include Ireland's Kieran Behan and nominative spots for the top-scoring all-arounders from the test event aswell as a single entry for those countries who missed out on team qualification.

Test Event - Intermediate Results

With all important olympic qualification on the line, Great Britain's male gymnasts will compete in the last of 3 subdivisions today at the O2 arena, starting their competition at 19.15 GMT

The second rotation has just wrapped up with the scores around the middle of the table (and that 4th place cut-off for an olympic spot) very very close.

For a bit of perspective, the qualifying scores of the test event nations at the 2011 worlds were:
9. France 349.818
10. GB 348.742
11. Spain 348.725
12. Canada 347.076
13. Brazil 346.626
14. Puerto Rico 344.460
15. Italy 343.642
16. Belarus 342.575

Corral Barron of Mexico leads the all around qualification with 88.465 ahead of Cyril Tommasone of France. Full results will be updated after the conclusion of men's qualification this evening.

London 2012 Test Event

The Olympic year is finally here and this week all gymnastics disciplines will have a final chance to qualify teams or athletes to the olympic games.


Katie from Full Twist and other bloggers will beat the O2 to report on the event. Here is her great preview on the event.

The main event will be the team qualifications for artistic gymnastics, with the teams ranked 9th-16th at the Tokyo worlds competing for the final 4 team spots to London. The teams are:

MAG

1. Belarus
2. Brazil
3. Great Britain
4. Canada
5. Spain
6. France
7. Italy
8. Puerto Rico

WAG

1. Belgium
2. Canada
3. Brazil
4. France
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Korea
8. Netherlands

As well as the team competition, for many of the lower ranked gymnastics nations this is their one chance to qualify individual gymnasts to the games, and an opportunity for the nations who have had a disappointing year and failed to qualify teams to the event to regain some pride, particularly Switzerland and Ukraine, countries with a strong medal record on the world stage who due to injuries and retirements had a disappointing 2011.

Being the first major international event of 2012, the test event will also be a chance for us to finally see some of the 'rookie' seniors who were too young to compete in 2011 but will definitely be in contention for a spot on their nation's teams in 2012.

The full list of participants is here, Some of the new or rising names to look out for will be:

Victoria Moors (Canada)
Erika Fasana (Italy)
Rebecca Tunney & Jocelyn Hunt (GB)
Ana Sofia Gomez Porraz (Guatemala)
Anastasia Grishina & Julia Inshina (Russia)
Nadia Muelhauser (Suitzerland)

Along with established names:
Sui Lu & Yao Jinnan (China)
Jessica Lopez (Venezuela)
Giulia Steingruber (Suitzerland)
Jade Barbossa (Brazil)
Kristina Vaculik & Peng Peng Lee (Canada)
Vanessa Ferrari & Carlotta Ferlito (Italy)
Youna Dufournet (France)

The event is sadly not being broadcast on TV but there will be plenty of online coverage from the following bloggers

• Full Twist – Twitter – Facebook
• The All Around - Twitter – Facebook
• Gym Power – Twitter – Facebook
• Gymnastics Examiner – Twitter - Facebook
• Gymnastics Coaching - Twitter – Facebook
• Gym Blog Brazil – Twitter – Facebook
• Grace Chiu will be taking photographs at the event

as well as from British Gymnastics, the FIG event website and youtube channel.