The 2021 Russian Junior Championships take place Feb. 3-5 at the Ice Arena in Krasnoyarsk. The top 18 ladies and men, 12 pairs and 15 ice dance teams in the country will be battling it out for top honors. This competition would normally serve as part of the selection process for the World Junior Championships, but as that competition has been cancelled, the Russian federation is considering holding an ″international″ junior event sometime in March to keep its young skaters motivated.
Last season′s junior stars Kamila Valieva, Daria Usacheva and Maiia Khromkyh will not be participating in this competition, following their respective debuts at the senior championship level in December, but a handful of skaters that did compete at senior nationals will be chasing the junior titles in Krasnoyarsk. Those include (ladies) Anna Frolova, Valeria Kostina and Ksenia Tsibinova; (men) Evgeni Semenenko, Artem Kovalev, Ilya Yablokov and Egor Rukhin; and the pairs team of Iuliia Artemeva and Mikhail Nazarychev. Also absent from this competition are ice dancers Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin, who finished fifth at the 2020 World Junior Championships. Davis sustained an ankle fracture in July 2020, which required a long-term recovery, and a subsequent illness extended the delay in their resuming full-time training.
Daniil Samsonov — the reigning Russian junior men′s champion and the 2019 Junior Grand Prix Final bronze medalist — is back skating after being off the ice for almost all of 2020 due to injury and a growth spurt. He is the only returning champion from 2020.
One of the young stars to watch at this competition is Sofia Akatieva, who trains with Eteri Tutberidze and her team in Moscow. The 13-year-old won both her Russian Cup assignments in 2020. At the second stop in Kazan, she landed two quad toes, one in combination, a triple Axel, and six other triples in the free skate.
The 2021 Russian Junior Championships will be live streamed on the Channel One website and on the network′s YouTube channel with Ted Barton hosting all the action.
ENTRIES (Russian)
START ORDERS/RESULTS
LIVE STREAM (RUSSIA)
ENGLISH LIVE STREAM — DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3
WORLD CLOCK
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
TATJANA FLADE PREVIEWS THE COMPETITION
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