standings

Guys, check out this competition standings...it's from the past, but I wonder- where's Sarah Wheat?

Stats

Sara's results:




2003-2004
North Atlantic Regionals - 11th

2002-2003
(injured)

2001-2002
U.S. Championships - 12th
Nebelhorn Trophy - 8th
South Atlantic Regionals - 4th
Eastern Sectionals - 3rd

2000-2001
World Junior Championships - 10th
US Championships - 9th
Eastern Sectionals - 2nd
JGP Germany 2nd
JGP France - 4th

1999-2000
2000 US Championships - 10th
Eastern Sectionals - 2nd
JGP Norway - 7th
JGP Netherlands - 2nd
Gardena Winter Trophy - 3rd


Its very rare for jr national champs to do well as sr level skaters. Some people think that there is a "jr curse", and you can think what you will on that. Personally, there are times when I think there must be.

Kristina Oblasova, Daria Timoshenko, Julia Soldatova, Sydne Vogel, Elena Ivanova, Letitia Hubert. All of them won at Junior Worlds, just to stuggle with their senior careers. The last people to win Worlds at both levels were Irina at 1995, and Michelle in 1994. I also found out that weird things happen at the junior level. Daria Timoshenko beating Sarah Hughes?!? Letitia Hubert beating Lu Chen?!? What is with people at juniors?

I was talking about US Jr Nats. The record there is even worse than at Jr worlds. The last Jr National Champ to do well was Carol Heiss. You could count Sarah Hughes, but her jumps were always cheated and she ended up burning out publicly. With Carol, you could argue that she was "touched by the curse" when her mother died.

JR Curse

I think the junior worlds curse is a bit strange on pairs and ladies' singles, but seems to be more forgiving with dance and men. With dance, they tend to switch partners and become the dance team we know them as (Anissina and Averbukh split up and became two world champion teams; Todd Eldredge was a jr/sr world champion, as were Yagudin and Pluschenko)

The ladies and the pairs don't seem to have it too easy. Jessica Mills, Sydne Vogel, Kristina Oblasova, Yulia Soldatova, Yelena Ivanova, and a few others kinda disappeared after their senior win. I agree with the poster that mentioned that some skaters were beaten by others in Juniors that eventually kicked their behinds in seniors. The Russian sweep of 1996 (none of those Russians were ever heard from again, like Ivanova, Pingatcheva and Kanaeva. In fourth, fifth, and sixth were Suguri, Lipinski, and Gusmeroli).
Then, only in Juniors do we find (with the exception of maybe Lu Chen in seniors) a world champion one year, and out of the top ten the next year (Oblasova). The funniest results in men's were in 1994, when Mike Weiss won, Yagudin was 4th, Abt was 8th, and Ilia Kulik was 11th!!!!