The ISU Development Trophy for European countries was held from April 28 to May 4 in Gdansk (POL) and attracted 64 skaters and 35 coaches from 18 countries. It is the third time in a row that the Polish Figure Skating Federation holds this event and each year the organization improves. Gdansk has an excellent facility for such an event providing ice rinks, meeting rooms, accommodation and food in one building.
Not only is the number of participants is improving every year but also their level. All the skaters who competed in the Junior level this year demonstrated strong programs executing all triple jumps. In previous years few skaters were able to include triple jumps in their program. However this year the winners of the Ladies Junior competitions (C. Johansson from SWE and M. Carsini from ITA) showed great potential to qualify for the 2016 ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships.
Last year, it was decided to restructure this Event. It now begins with the competitions, followed by the training camp and seminar. This proved to be a positive change as it helped skaters to focus first on competitions and then to concentrate on new exercises and elements to improve their technical skills. It also helped to make a reasonable analysis of competition performances and to regroup skaters in accordance with their level and skating skills.
It is necessary to underline the great improvement made by the skaters of Iceland and Cyprus. Skaters from Iceland started participating in ISU Development Events when they were introduced back in 1999. They actually took part in every ISU project and it helped them to improve from the level of beginners to the level of International competitors in 2015. Almost all the skaters from Iceland were able to include 2A in their programs at competitions and some of them could go to triple jumps as well. Their skating skills give them an opportunity to perform programs under the requirements of the ISU Judging System. Similarly the Cypriot skaters demonstrated an essential improvement since last year, when they were mainly able to perform only single jumps up to single Axel.
All the participating Coaches underlined the importance of the ISU Development Events which helped most of them to reconsider their work and to improve their knowledge and skills. During the training camp and the seminar attention was mainly paid to the technique of modern Figure Skating (with a firm link between the technique of skating skills and difficulty of elements.) The skating skills exercises were used not only to improve skating ability, but also to improve the entries to jumps by providing the proper rhythm and direction of movements in order to correct the technique of jumps. All the coaches were present at every on ice practice in order to help their skaters and to learn exercises themselves.
At the end of each training day there were organized Coaches meetings to discuss the technical principles and the training methods as well as a Q&A session. The main moderators of the training camp and seminar were A. Vedenin (technique, training methods) and S. Tewanjan (how to understand ISU Judging System requirements). The ISU Single & Pair Skating Technical Committee Chair Mr A. Lakernik participated in the competitions as the Technical Controller and in the Coaches meeting to analyze the results of competitions.