2025-2026 Canadian Figure Skating | Page 3 | Golden Skate

2025-2026 Canadian Figure Skating

Just catching up….

GP Assignments
Men
I’m so happy to see Roman with two GP events for next season. He earned it after his Worlds performance. I get a strange feeling this Olympic Season might be his last season. So, I hope he has a season to be proud of.
Aleksa - I expected him to get this spot
Stephen G - I really hope this spot was a TBD. It would have been nice for Wesley and some of the others to get an opportunity to compete for this spot based on domestic summer competitions

Women
Maddie - as expected for her to get two spots.
SMD - I’m so happy she got the other skate Canada spot
KMS - I was shocked and happy to see her get a GP event outside Canada
To see them have the third SC spot as TBD makes me so happy. I hope this spurs on some thrilling competition amongst our ladies. Kaiya, Uliana, Fee Ann, Breken get a chance to fight for this spot. Also, if KMS skates well this summer, she has a chance to get two events this upcoming season. How exciting!! KMS May get that second spot on her own. Also, Uliana and SMD are pretty high in the world standings. So, I think I’m kind of hoping Kaiya takes advantage of this opportunity.

Pairs
Our three pairs got their three spots. I was happy to see Fiona and Ben have a GP spot too

Dance
Our top two teams got their two spots. Our next two teams got a GP spot outside of Canada.
I love the TBD for SC. I hope a new teams capitalized on this opportunity. However, I think this spot is really between our 3rd and 4th best dance teams.

I’m looking forward to this upcoming season. In summary, Dance and Pairs was expected in terms of GP spots. For men, I’m disappointed they already assigned the spots to the three athletes. For Women, I applaud SC for leaving one spot open as TBD. I love seeing TBD 😍 👏
 
Stephen G - I really hope this spot was a TBD. It would have been nice for Wesley and some of the others to get an opportunity to compete for this spot based on domestic summer competitions
Once Wesley posted about his surgery, I figured Gogolev would get the spot. But I would have liked to see him compete for it since he's only done two full competitions since 2024 Nationals.
 
Once Wesley posted about his surgery, I figured Gogolev would get the spot. But I would have liked to see him compete for it since he's only done two full competitions since 2024 Nationals.
Also, I believe Canada has earned 1 more spot in the GP circuit in each of all four of the disciplines, as compared to last season.
 
Just catching up….

GP Assignments
Men
I’m so happy to see Roman with two GP events for next season. He earned it after his Worlds performance. I get a strange feeling this Olympic Season might be his last season. So, I hope he has a season to be proud of.
Aleksa - I expected him to get this spot
Stephen G - I really hope this spot was a TBD. It would have been nice for Wesley and some of the others to get an opportunity to compete for this spot based on domestic summer competitions

Women
Maddie - as expected for her to get two spots.
SMD - I’m so happy she got the other skate Canada spot
KMS - I was shocked and happy to see her get a GP event outside Canada
To see them have the third SC spot as TBD makes me so happy. I hope this spurs on some thrilling competition amongst our ladies. Kaiya, Uliana, Fee Ann, Breken get a chance to fight for this spot. Also, if KMS skates well this summer, she has a chance to get two events this upcoming season. How exciting!! KMS May get that second spot on her own. Also, Uliana and SMD are pretty high in the world standings. So, I think I’m kind of hoping Kaiya takes advantage of this opportunity.

Pairs
Our three pairs got their three spots. I was happy to see Fiona and Ben have a GP spot too

Dance
Our top two teams got their two spots. Our next two teams got a GP spot outside of Canada.
I love the TBD for SC. I hope a new teams capitalized on this opportunity. However, I think this spot is really between our 3rd and 4th best dance teams.

I’m looking forward to this upcoming season. In summary, Dance and Pairs was expected in terms of GP spots. For men, I’m disappointed they already assigned the spots to the three athletes. For Women, I applaud SC for leaving one spot open as TBD. I love seeing TBD 😍 👏

Hmm Kaiya's team is setting their sights on not just on a GP assignment but the lone Olympic spot for the Women's.
 
i like this. I want all our women to set their goals very high... even if it's very unlikely someone not named Madeline will earn that spot.
Me too!! I love that she is going for it.
Had Kaiya gone for triple double jump combinations, instead of triple triple combos, at Nationals, she would have been the reigning silver medalist.

She has been Maddie’s toughest competition this Olympic cycle and I saw improvements to the height of her individual triple jumps since moving to the Cricket Club. Last season, her best domestic competition was her first domestic event.
 
Had Kaiya gone for triple double jump combinations, instead of triple triple combos, at Nationals, she would have been the reigning silver medalist.
I don't think she would necessarily have won silver with a 3-2. She still lost points on her spins and had issues with her 3F (although it's more a matter of who didn't have issues with their 3F at Nationals...)

I'm interested to see if she'll change her layout for the short this season and how she'll do after more time at the Cricket Club.
 
Me too!! I love that she is going for it.
Had Kaiya gone for triple double jump combinations, instead of triple triple combos, at Nationals, she would have been the reigning silver medalist.

She has been Maddie’s toughest competition this Olympic cycle and I saw improvements to the height of her individual triple jumps since moving to the Cricket Club. Last season, her best domestic competition was her first domestic event.
I'm happy to not be the only one thinking that Kaiya would have be the silver medalist at national if she was doing triple/double combo instead of triple/triple. But, you know what I prefer her fighting spirit to go to the difficult triple/triple jump in competition instead of some skater who are playing safe with triple/double combo.

So, to me this year, her 4th place finish at national is a strong 2nd place finish to my heart because she demonstrated fighting spirit in her skating even if it doesn't work like she want, she try her best and is not scare to do the difficult triple/triple. She go for it know matter what.
 
I will be attending at least one day of CQÉ. Hoping that the lack of a Canadian challenger will force many international dance teams to compete there... on top of our own....
 
The BC Summer series begins next weekend.

My favourite Canadian Junior Boy, David Howes is on the entry list.

Also, Uliana (Kaiya’s biggest challenger for the TBD spot) is scheduled to be there. Hopefully, she scores over 166, to nab a Challenger spot (Denis Ten again 😝)
 
The BC Summer series begins next weekend.

My favourite Canadian Junior Boy, David Howes is on the entry list.

Also, Uliana (Kaiya’s biggest challenger for the TBD spot) is scheduled to be there. Hopefully, she scores over 166, to nab a Challenger spot (Denis Ten again 😝)
Off course, she will Uliana have no difficulty to gain a score over 166 in Canada. Go Uliana !!!
 
Was the word "consistently" there in the past ? Because, as we know... how can someone "consistently" hit those benchmarks if they do one or two summer events ?
It was there last season. Breken was able to get an assignment with her summer competitions and only went over the benchmark at CQE.
 
Challenger/Senior International selection criteria for 2025-26 - https://skatecanada.ca/wp-content/u...enior-Challenger-and-International-Events.pdf

I don't think there's been any change for the threshold scores. Priority for assignments goes to skaters with GP assignments.
Yeah, no changes. They have underlined consistently this time around, though (it was there before, I checked), so I guess they want to emphasize that.

Skaters who have scored above the benchmark at least once in the 2024/25 season:

Men:
  • International: Roman Sadovsky, Stephen Gogolev, Aleksa Rakic, Wesley Chiu, Matthew Newnham, Grayson Long
  • Domestic: Anthony Paradis
Women:
  • International: Madeline Schizas, Katherine Medland-Spence, Uliana Shiryaeva, Sara-Maude Dupuis, Fee Ann Landry, Kaiya Ruiter
  • Domestic: Breken Brezden, Amy Shao Ning Yang
Pairs:
  • International: Stellato/Deschamps, Pereira/Michaud, Laurin/Ethier, Bombardier/Mimar, Kemp/Elizarov, Desrochers/Thrasher, Ariano Kent/Laliberte Laurent
Ice Dance:
  • International: Gilles/Poirier, Lajoie/Lagha, Lauriault/Le Gac, Fabbri/Ayer, Hensen/Lickers, Gauthier/Thieren
  • Domestic: Nguyen/Giang, Robinson/Portz, Fournier/Zhu

(Hope I didn't forget anyone. 🤞 Also, some of these skaters were clearly much more consistent in outscoring the benchmark than others, but we'll see how important that "consistently" will be in the end.)
 
Minsol Kwan is competing at the July Ontario Sectional Series (interim list posted) - in Junior women. It is a non-qualifying event so I am assuming an international guest can compete there but I find it interesting that she is competing at the Junior level rather than Senior as she did last October. It will be interesting to see how she performs this year and whether she intends to switch to Canada. If she does, Junior women is going to be very interesting and competitive this year!
 
Minsol Kwan is competing at the July Ontario Sectional Series (interim list posted) - in Junior women. It is a non-qualifying event so I am assuming an international guest can compete there but I find it interesting that she is competing at the Junior level rather than Senior as she did last October. It will be interesting to see how she performs this year and whether she intends to switch to Canada. If she does, Junior women is going to be very interesting and competitive this year!
I'm leaning towards no switch. The competition is a week after NextGen, so she likely isn't competing there. The skaters who are very likely to be at NextGen aren't competing here (including Reese Rose, whose club is hosting the competition.)

It would make sense to compete as a Junior to practice for the JGP. If she is going for the JGP, it would make more sense to me if it was Korea based on the timing of the competitions in Canada.
 
I'm leaning towards no switch. The competition is a week after NextGen, so she likely isn't competing there. The skaters who are very likely to be at NextGen aren't competing here (including Reese Rose, whose club is hosting the competition.)

It would make sense to compete as a Junior to practice for the JGP. If she is going for the JGP, it would make more sense to me if it was Korea based on the timing of the competitions in Canada.
But the Korean JGP qualifier (which she'd have to compete at to even get any JGP assignments) is usually also in the last ten days of July and that would collide with the July Ontario Sectional Series 🤔 Are there any rules about who can get invited to NextGen camp+competition?

(Also wondering about Victoria Barakhtina, who hasn't competed at all in Canadian domestic competitions yet, but must surely have been released by now.)
 
Back
Top