(March 4, 2004)

In just their first time competing as a pair at the International Skating Union (ISU) World Junior Figure Skating Championships, Canadian pair Jessica Dubé and Bryce Davison won the silver medal.

Dubé and Davison’s silver medal is the first Canadian medal at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships in 10 years. Canada’s last medal at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships came in 1994 when Caroline Haddad and Jean-Sebastien Fecteau won the silver medal in the pair event.

The 16-year-old Dubé, of St-Cyrille-de-Wendover, Que., and Davison, 18, of Cambridge, Ont., skated both a strong short program and an impressive free skate to finish second overall.

It has been a successful year for Dubé and Davison, who have only been skating together for just under a year. They competed in two ISU Junior Grand Prix events this season, winning the gold medal at the ISU Junior Grand Prix events in both Mexico City, Mexico and Okaya City, Japan. Their strong performance on the Junior Grand Prix circuit qualified them for the ISU Junior Grand Prix Final, at which they won the gold medal.

Dubé and Davison continued their winning ways when they captured the Canadian Junior Pair title at the 2004 BMO Financial Group Canadian Championships, which were held in Edmonton in early January.

Dubé and Davison, who were standing in second-place after the short program, continued their outstanding skating at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships. The duo opened their free skate, which they performed to Romeo and Juliet, with a triple twist. They also completed a throw triple Salchow, side-by-side double Axel-double toeloop sequence, an impressive throw triple loop, and strong lifts.

The judges rewarded Dubé and Davison for their performance with marks ranging from 5.1 to 5.6 for technical merit and from 5.1 to 5.8 for presentation. The duo ended up with four first-place ordinals, three second-place ordinals and two third-place ordinals, which put them in second-place overall.

“We’re very happy with our performance,” said Davison. “We wanted to focus on the second mark, and that’s what we did.”

Winning the gold medal was the Russian duo of Natalia Shestakova and Pavel Lebedev, who were awarded with marks ranging from 4.9 to 5.6 for technical merit and from 4.8 to 5.7 for presentation.

Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov, also of Russia, took home the bronze medal.

Terra Findlay, 13, of Echo Bay, Ont., and John Mattatall, 21, of Tatamagouche, N.S., moved up from 11th after the short program to finish 10th overall.

Dubé and Davison’s second-place finish combined with Findlay and Mattatall’s 10th-place finish enables Canada to send three pair teams to next year’s ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships.