Detroit, home this weekend to Grand Prix opener Skate America, first hosted the competition back in 1995, at a time when it served as the opening event in the Champions Series. Included among the home competitors at that event were reigning U.S. silver medalists Kyoko Ina & Jason Dungjen, a man of double local ties — the native of Troy, Michigan, would in later years, of course, go on to become a primary singles and pairs coach at the very busy Detroit Skating Club.**
Though Ina & Dungjen here got off to a somewhat disappointing start with a fifth-place short, the debut of their long program to the popular Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, while not spotless, was sufficiently solid to allow the pair to pull up a spot to a fourth-place finish overall.
**The event, it might be noted, may have spelled locational coaching destiny for more than one skater there: silver in dance went to Anjelika Krylova & Oleg Ovsiannikov.
And as a bonus, at 2001’s Skate America — which was not, it should be said, based in Detroit — Kyoko Ina & John Zimmerman debuted their excellent short program to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a selection set to score U.S. champion Ashley Wagner’s short program at this year’s event. Video of that particular outing is not available, but their medal-winning Worlds performance will suffice: