Canadian Ice Dancers Crack Top 10 at ISU Junior Grand Prix

GDANSK, Poland – Hailey Yu and Brendan Giang of Burnaby, B.C., produced the sixth best free dance of the day to climb from 12^th to 10^th place overall in ice dancing on Saturday to conclude the sixth stop on the ISU figure skating circuit.

Irina Khavronina and Dan Cirisano of Russia collected their second win of the season with Isabella Flores and Dimitry Tsarevski of the U.S. second and Angelina Kudryavtseva and Ilia Karankevich of Cyprus in third.

‘’This was a big step up from our short program,’’ said Yu, 16. ‘’In our minds we were really set on what we had to do. We still need to gain more consistency on our twizzles and build more confidence.’’

Chaima Ben Khelifa of Laval, Que., and Everest Zhu of Contestogo, Ont., posted the 10^th best free dance but remained 11^th overall.

‘’We attacked the program more than we normally do and it felt like we gave it our all,’’ said Zhu, 18. ‘’There were still some bobbles, but we are very pleased with the performance. We took the feedback we got from our first event earlier this season and really incorporated that into our skating.’’

Both Canadian ice dance couples are in their first season on the ISU Junior Grand Prix figure skating circuit and placed eighth at their respective season opening events last month.

The seventh stop on the circuit is this upcoming Thursday to Saturday in Linz, Austria.

Full results: http://www.isuresults.com/results/season2122/jgppol2021/