With half the titles already wrapped up at the world championships in Nice, There are probably only a handful of skaters who can truely say the skated right up to their potential in bost the short and free programs. Japan's Narumi Takahashi and Mervin Tran are 2 of those skaters, surprising themselves, their coaches and the fans on the way to winning Japan's first ever world medal in pairs figure skating. True, they were 20 points or so away from challenging for gold, but before this week few would have picked them for the podium at all.
Given the fact that no major names were missing from this years pairs lineup (except perhaps for China's Zhang & Zhang) the final competition was a messy affair, with many of the predicted favourites taking falls and falling below their season's bests. Russia's Tatiana Volosozhar & Maxim Trankov skating lights out in the free skate to Black Swan, climbing all the way from a disasterous 8th place in the SP to 2nd overall, but narrowly edged by the now 4-time world champions Aliona Savchenko & Robin Szolkowy of Germany.
The pairs podium was indeed multinational, with 5 nations represented in fact! Both Tatiana Volosozhar and Aliona Savchenko are native Ukranians, having transferred location and citizenship to Russia and Germany respectively. Mervin Tran is Canadian (he and Takahashi train in Montreal on the same ice as 5th placed Duhamel & Radford).
This calls into question the matter of olympic eligibility. To compete at the games athletes need to be citizens of the country they are representing (for at least a certain period leading up to the games). As Japan does not allow dual citizenship, Tran would have to completely give up his canadian citizenship in order to skate with Takahashi under the Japanese flag in Sochi 2014. This would be a huge step and I haven't heard any word of it in the press, but pressure to do so may increase in the wake of their recent worlds success. It's not unheard of. Yuko Kavaguti (or Kawaguchi as she was known) gave up her Japanese citizenship to skate with Alexander Smirnov in Vancouver 2010. She now requires a visa to visit her family in Japan! Whilst it would be a shame to not see this young takented pair at the Olympics, it's hoped Mervin Tran is not too pressured by the Japanese Federation to take such a drastic step.
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