By: Pj Kwong

Watching the pairs was a treat. Skate Ontario’s Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud were solid and continue on their upward and very successful progression. At the end of the day, their 5th place finish in the free program boosted them into 5th place overall. #skateontarioproud.

Honourable mention: Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps for staying in character all the while delivering on great elements and THAT DRESS! (Fabulous!)

Who won? Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps – CAN – One word: OUTSTANDING

The Men’s event was a wild ride finishing with Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama who posted a 300+ points overall score and the crowd going crazy. Love it!

Skate Ontario’s Conrad Orzel was methodical in his approach and took the elements one at a time. It was nice to see, and his performance was strong enough that he held his position in 17th place overall. Roman Sadovsky’s performance brought to mind something I have been wanting to mention for a long time and that is – the music cannot be an afterthought in figure skating. Since the introduction of music with lyrics, I have noticed a very annoying trend and that is musical choices that are incidental to the program and have no bearing on the choreography. In that way, I feel like I am being shanghaied into watching an event. (See what I did there???).

Back to skating – Roman’s music was used as a layer of the program that included the choreography and the elements to produce a complete package. We need more of this in skating. You know if my mind wanders to my grocery list while watching skating, that something’s lacking. I cannot tell you how often that happens that I hear a random song blaring and wonder if a skater has accidentally shared a song from their Spotify warm-up list or if they’re skating to someone else’s music. Sigh.

I am sure I wasn’t the only one to notice Roman’s artistry as that coupled with some great technical elements bumped him up a spot to finish in 10th place.

Honourable mention: Boyang Jin – CHN – for a solid performance in front of a hometown crowd AND the Yuzuru-like shower of stuffed animals on to the ice and the gaggle of flower kids sent to retrieve them. (It took a while – and made me smile)

Who won? Yuma Kagiyama – JPN – One word: OMG

Our dancers (Piper and Paul) skate Sunday afternoon local time in Shanghai and will close out the competition. As always – send your messages of support using the hashtag #SkateOntarioProud to our athletes, follow Skate Ontario on all our social media and if you want to check out what everyone is saying use the hashtag #4ContsFigure.