The ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships 2017 continued in Taipei City, Chinese Taipei, Thursday with the Short Dance.
Alla Loboda/Pavel Drozd (RUS) win Short Dance
Alla Loboda/Pavel Drozd of Russia edged out USA’s Rachel Parsons/Michael Parsons in the Short Dance by just 0.30 points to take first place. Anastasia Skoptcova/Kirill Aleshin of Russia are currently ranked third.
Dancing to “St. Louis Blues” and Swing, Loboda/Drozd collected a level four for their twizzles, the Blues pattern and the straight line lift while the side by side footwork merited a level three. The ISU Junior Grand Prix finalists improved their previous personal best by 0.01 points and had 67.59 points. “Today we are so happy, because we worked a lot after the Grand Prix Final, after our National Championships and today we were able to show our work and we really enjoyed our program. Today we lived in our music and I think this is a positive thing. We hope to do our best in the free dance”, Drozd said.
Parsons/Parsons’ produced a strong performance to Hip Hop “A Little Party Killed Nobody” and Blues “Born To Die” as well and earned the same levels as the Russian couple. The ISU Junior Grand Prix Final Champions scored 67.29 points, just below their personal best from the Junior Final. “This has been a pretty good season for us so far. There has been a lot of improvement and in the short dance we’ve been able to show the improvement we’ve made this season. It is just a very good way to end the (junior) short dance competition“, Rachel Parsons commented.
Skoptcova/Aleshin’s program to “At Last” (Blues) and “Swing Baby” featured four level-four elements as well. The team from Moscow posted a new personal best of 63.38 points. “We’re happy that we were able to end the short dance on a high note. We’ve been working on the technical side and on the components. Everything we’ve worked on we were able to show, such as the levels and the speed“, Aleshin told the press.
Anastasia Shpilevaya/Grigory Smirnov (RUS) are within striking distance of the podium in fourth place at 63.26 points. Majorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha (CAN) finished fifth (60.79 points) followed by Christina Carreira/Anthony Ponomarenko (USA/60.53 points). Defending champions Lorraine McNamara/ Quinn Carpenter (USA) are standing in seventh place after making errors in their side by side footwork (60.30 points).
For more information, full entry lists and results please see: www.isu.org and http://www.wjc2017.com/. #WorldJFigure