Two Canadian Pairs Place in Top-10 at World Junior Championships

(February 27, 2003)
The results from the pair competition at the 2003 World Junior Figure Skating Championships show that Canada has strong up-and-coming pair teams.

Once the final tallies were in, Canada had two teams place in the top-10. Last year's Canadian Junior Pair Champions, Carla Montgomery and Ryan Arnold, moved up from eighth-place after the short program to finish in sixth-place, and the current Canadian Junior Pair Champions, Jessica Dubé and Samuel Tétrault, went from 12th after the short program to finish in ninth-place.

This is the second year in a row that two Canadian pair teams have finished in the top-10 at the World Junior Championships. In last year's event, Montgomery and Arnold placed fifth, and Johanna Purdy and Kevin Maguire finished in ninth-place.

Capturing the gold medal this year was the Chinese team of Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang, who were also the 2001 World Junior Champions. Zhang and Zhang, who are just coming off a bronze medal win at the 2003 ISU Four Continents Championships, completed a number of difficult technical elements, including side-by-side triple toe loops, side-by-side double Axels and a throw triple Salchow.

Finishing in second-place were Yang Ding and Zongfei Ren, also from China. Ding and Ren opened their performance with a very high-risk element, attempting to land a throw quadruple toe loop at the beginning of their program, which they missed.

Rounding out the podium were bronze medallists Jennifer Don and Jonathon Hunt of the U.S.