Minto Summer Skate began August 1, with junior and senior dance and junior pairs (LP only) beginning Saturday. The registered skaters list includes Edwards & Pang (FD only) and Nicole Orford & Thomas Williams (SD only) fresh off of Lake Placid, as well as Kharis Ralph & Asher Hill (FD only), Mackenzie Bent & Garrett Mackeen, and the senior debut of Victoria & Connor Hasegawa, who relocated to train in Canton last season.
The splashier regional competition news of the week, however, was likely the surprise reveal that Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir will be debuting their short dance at the Championnats québécois d’été in Boisbriand on August 10. Though not included in the final entry list, they do appear in the starting order for the segment. The competition, which will also feature the season debut of Canadian champions and World bronze medalists Meagan Duhamel & Eric Radford, will be streamed live, available to viewers internationally.
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Ice-Dance.com has once again provided extensive coverage of the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships, courtesy of its exclusive coverage with much more still to come including program reports and additional photo albums.
From results provided, the central figures of the senior dance event were two of the competition’s several Michigan-based couples. The Detroit Skating Club’s Alexandra Aldridge & Daniel Eaton, making their senior debut, led the short dance overall with a score of 53.45. Veterans Lynn Kriengkrairut & Logan Giulietti-Schmitt, training under Igor Shpilband at Novi and blogging this competition for icenetwork, placed only fourth in the same group in the segment with a score of 49.47. The team, though, moved up in the free dance to claim the top segment score among all seniors of 79.41, while Aldridge & Eaton took first in their group and second overall with a score of 78.03.
Among juniors, Aldridge & Eaton’s training mates Kaitlin Hawayek & Jean-Luc Baker led wire-to-wire, taking a short dance score of 54.32 to Lorraine McNamara & Quinn Carpenter’s 49.79 second-best overall score. Their overall free dance victory of 74.85 was a closer one, leading other training mates Holly Moore & Daniel Klaber (68.05) in their group, but just ahead of the 72.49 from Group B leaders and 2013 Canadian junior champions Madeline Edwards & ZhaoKai Pang, who led their short dance group with a third-best overall score of 48.09.
Official results for most events can be found at the Lake Placid Skating website. Ice-Dance.com on Facebook and Twitter offers additional unofficial results for those events not yet published.