Ilhan Mansiz: from World Cup hero to Olympic pairs figure skater?

[gsk8]

The scorer of Turkey's most important goal has his heart set on success in a second sporting career at the Sochi Winter Games...

More

[Mathman]

Now that Tugba Karademir is retired, I needed a good reason to root for Turkey!

[dorispulaski]

There are several good reasons to root for Turkey. Since Tugba retired, they have quite a solid effort as a federation.

In dance, they are particularly good:

Seniors:

Alisa Agafanova & Alper Ucar finished 13th in Europeans, and are entered for Worlds, and made the qualifying scores for it
http://www.isuresults.com/bios/isufs00012930.htm
http://www.isuresults.com/events/cat00467992.htm

Cagla Demirsal & Berk Akalin are competing at Junior Worlds now, and will be in the FD today.
14 Q Cagla DEMIRSAL / Berk AKALIN TUR 47.03 26.92 21.11 5.29 5.04 5.39 5.36 5.29 1.00 #25

And they are in 14th spot, even with a one point deduction. If they had not had the deduction, they'd be tied for 12th, and they are, I believe, junior eligible, next year.

In ladies, Sila Saygi qualified for the LP at Europeans, but is not entered for Worlds
23 Sila SAYGI TUR 119.27 21 23

Junior- Melisa will not qualify for the LP, but she did make the tech scores necessary to skate at Jr Worlds at all.
16 Melisa Sema ATIK TUR 32.58 16.87 15.71 4.07 3.68 3.96 4.00 3.93 0.00 #15

In mens,
Junior Worlds
Giray did not qualify for the LP
37 Giray SENOL TUR 36.64 19.17 17.47 3.54 3.32 3.50 3.61 3.50 0.00 #4

There was no Turkish man at Europeans, and none entered for Worlds.

So now they have a pair team

[Totentanz]

Melisa Sema Atik was 5th at European Youth Olympic Festival last week. Scored 39 for SP and 117 total. And there was actually a Turkish man, Ali Demirboga skated in Euros, but couldn't qualify for the FS. Turkey has a talented junior man, Osman Akgun, who had medalled three times at different competitions (like Challenge Cup, Crystal Skate) recently. There is hope that he may be the first Turkish man to land 3A jump in future.

[TontoK]

Well, I will be rooting for Turkey to gain Olympic berths!

How nice to see skating begin to flourish in a country with not a lot of tradition.

You'd think someone at ISU would see that the way to broaden the global appeal of figure skating is to either lower minimum score qualifications or to waive them entirely for some federations without a strong winter sport history.

[Olympia]

I'm always glad to hear that a new country is entering the mix. I loved rooting for Tugba.

Totally not relevant to skating excellence, but I love Turkish names. They're an entirely different language family from any of the other European or Asian countries competing, and their names looks so poetic. I'll enjoy seeing them on skating rosters. I know; I'm a word geek.