With Skate Detroit in full swing and a successful day for North American pairs in Thursday’s short program, a tour through a few pairs event leaders from past years.
Detroit’s Andrea Best & Trevor Young, here with their long program to Spartacus, took first at juniors at 2007 Skate Detroit. The team’s subsequent senior career would be somewhat rocky; the two eventually split, in 2010 with Best retiring from the sport and Young partnering for a season with Becky Bereswill. But the 2006 national novice silver medalists wrapped their junior career in good fashion, taking, in addition to the victory here, a silver (competing as senior) at Finlandia Trophy and a fourth-place finish at 2008 Nationals:
In 2009, the junior lead went to Brittany Jones & Kurtis Gaskell, the then-reigning Canadian junior champions who trained out of Barrie, Ontario. The pair saw some decent results with this program in their first year on the international scene, including a JGP bronze and seventh at Junior Worlds; success within the national scene at seniors would provide more of a challenge, however. The team split in 2012; Jones, still age-eligible at the junior level internationally, teamed with Ian Beharry for the 2012-13 season to some JGP success which included, interestingly, a free skate to selections from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons — a theme visited in Jones & Gaskell’s free skate here:
Leaders after the short program at this year’s event and breaking 70 points for the first time in their career are Kirsten Moore-Towers & Dylan Moscovitch, who handily captured a Skate Detroit victory in 2012. Offered here is one of the first outings of their Queen medley LP, an imperfect performance but one which still suggested the promise of the later season successes they’d find: