The first official day of the new skating season kicked off today with the ladies, mens and pairs short programmes at the JGP Volvo Cup in Riga Latvia. Chinese skaters have taken the lead in all 3 disciplines.
Full Event Results In the ladies event
Zijun Li has taken a narrow lead over russian
Polina Agafonova. 14 year old Li is the 2010-11 Chinese national champion and was 9th at the 2011 Junior World Championships. She landed a clean 3Flip-2Toe combination and a 3Lutz with an edge call. She trains in Beijing under
Mingzhu Li (Former coach of
Lu Chen and
Caroline Zhang) and but has some american influence with her programmes choreographed by Karen Kwan-Oppegard. American
Ashley Cain sits in 3rd place, a clear 5 points behind the 2 leaders.
3 Asian skaters sit atop the mens standings after the short programme. Separated by a little over a point
He Zhang (China) leads over
Ryuju Hino (Japan) and
June-Hyoung Lee (Korea). All of these skaters are relative newcomers, but have strong jump arsenals to build on. Sadly Canadian wonderkind
Nam Nguyen botched his jumps and sits in 12th place with a score of 47.08. Perhaps this one will just have to go down to experience.
The pairs event was much more decisive.
Sui & Han hold an 8 point lead over second place skaters
Petaikina & Kurduykov of Russia. Sui and Han are knocking on the door of senior world medals this season, particularly if they can add mature style to their arsenel of tricks. The junior grand prix should very much be a warm-up act for them. The 3 american pairs sit 7th, 8th and 9th.
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