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Junior Skaters of 2018/19 season


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It looks like JGP will start with a bang! :smiley-happy093:

Wishing all the skaters a good start of the season!

(in the meanwhile I'll wait with bathed breath to know what will happen to Nastya T.:smiley-angelic001:)

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The season, in a sense, has already started, at least for one whom I feel will be one of the most-watched junior-level skaters this season.  I mean one Stephen Gogolev.  He begins junior-level competition this season internationally, but in Canada-only competitions he's already skating senior level, primarily because he's winning everything in sight on the lower levels.  He competed in the senior-level Canadian championships last season and ended up in 10th place.  Not bad for a thirteen-year-old.  In fact he had scores last season which had he been skating senior level would have qualified him for the World Championships.

 

I might add that he is coached by Brian Orser and according to Brian he's been training in the same sessions as one Yuzuru Hanyu for some time now.  In my opinion Stephen is probably going to move into Javi's place, even though he and Yuzu are not going to be direct competitors for the next two seasons.  After that I think things are going to become mighty interesting.

 

In any case the Minto Summer Skate 2018, a junior-level competition, was this weekend and it's not surprising that Stephen was victorious here, winning rather handily.  I had a chance to view both his programs and I saw a definite improvement over his programs of last season.  The choreography was more detailed, denser,  and he was showing a greater sense of the music than his earlier performances.  The kid's beginning to develop.

 

It's impossible to think that Yuzu's proximity has not been a factor in Stephen's development.  Both with birthdays in December, there's a full decade between them.  Crucially though is the fact that they both arrived at TCC at roughly the same time.  In the beginning I'm sure that Stephen was not being trained in the same sessions as Yuzu, since they both arrived with very different portfolios.  Stephen was a seven-year-old with no competitive history.  Yuzu was seventeen, with a World Championship bronze medal in his pocket.  Stephen was a seedling being nurtured towards full growth.  Yuzu was a fully-grown bush needing careful pruning.  The effectiveness of Brian's pruning can be seen in Yuzu's achievements since he arrived in Toronto.  From being a promising young talent he's morphed into a contender for the Greatest of All Time ranking.  Stephen's progress is much more hidden, but the fact that Stephen can land all the quads except the 4A, according to Brian's assertions more than once, indicate that he is a major talent who is being held back only by the rules regarding age when it comes to acquiring a competitive record.  I have absolutely no doubt that Stephen is even now being seen in Canada as that country's greatest hope for gold in Beijing.

 

In any case I think it really incumbent that those on the Planet here keep a careful watch on Stephen.  At age 13 he is a youngster just entering adolescence with a great deal of growth to come, both physically and mentally.  Remembering his experiences with Nam's growth spurts a few years back Brian has already been putting into place means to move Stephen through these next difficult years in as easy a way as is possible.  I think we should all remember, though, that while Brian treats all his skaters equally Stephen must have a certain significance for him, since whatever Stephen we see in the years to come is almost wholly a product of Brian's training methods.  All of Brian's other major skaters have come to him from elsewhere with substantial records of achievements already made.  Stephen is a TCC skater with almost no real experience preceding his coming to Brian's operations.  Because of this, and if Yuzu does hang on until Beijing, remembering the 1988 Winter Olympics 'Battle of the Brians' (Orser and Boitano) I can see a situation being driven by the media then of the Battle of Brian's Boys.  It could be interesting.

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