Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis develop year by year. Now the ice dancing couple succeeded in the international gp competition in Espoo.
Juulia Turkkilan and Matthias Versluis determined work to the top of ice dancing pays off.
For the first time in their careers, the Finnish couple won the prize positions in the international GP race late on Saturday in Espoo.
The free dance skated to the music of Schubert brought the pair a record score of 191.79 in the overall competition.
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve thought that it would be great to win a GP medal,” Turkkila said in the sports announcement.
The third place was secured when the American pair skated after the Finns Christina Carreira–Anthony Ponomarenko left behind them.
“It was a pleasure to skate today. We got a lot of energy from the audience,” said Versluis.
Turkkila and Versluis are former single skaters. They met in ice dancing in 2016. Until then, both had skated alone. Both won the Finnish championships in the same year in 2014.
The first test skating was in February 2016 at the Pirkkola Ice Hall in Helsinki.
In February, the pair was 15th at the Olympic Games in Beijing and 12th at the Spring World Championships. The European Championship in Espoo is coming up in January. Finns have a place on the screen in them. The couple had to miss the last European Championships when Turkkila fell ill with the corona virus.
Finland another ice dancing couple Yuka Orihara–Juho Pirinen presented a mermaid story on the ice of Espoo, which brought seventh place with a season record score of 173.17.
“Our goal was a clean free dance and it worked out well, so we are satisfied with the performance,” Pirinen said.
“Two GP races in consecutive weekends has been tough, so now we ask the coach for two days off,” Orihara continued.
The ice dance of the Espoo gp was overwhelmingly won by Canada Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier with a record score of 219.49. Americans Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker finished second with 202.46 points.
Yuka Orihara and Juho Pirinen on the ice at the Espoo GP.
Men’s in solo skating Valtter Virtanen skated a strong free program at Grand Prix Espoo and finished ninth in a tough competition.
Virtanen reached his record score of 204.02. The champion ice skater succeeded in all the jumping elements of his program, but this time the pirouettes lacked a few of the desired levels of difficulty.
“I really enjoy skating in front of the home crowd. The limit for the technical points of the World Championships was sadly still 1.3 points away. Now the eyes are already firmly on the EC competitions to be skated in Espoo in January,” said Virtanen.
The competition was won by a 17-year-old from the United States Ilia Malin, 278.39. Malin’s program had five successful quadruple jumps.
of Japan Shun Sato finished second with 262.21 points and France third Kevin Aymoz 255.69.
Espoo is the last race of the gp series, where the rest of the places were allocated to the final in Turin in December. Malin and Sato took the final place from Espoo.
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