Sunskate

2026 Dallas Classic (Plano, TX July 9-12, 2026 Adrian Diaz for IAMO)

Peal/Peal 🥇1st place (2nd RD, 1st FD) Flores/Jepsen 🥈2nd place (1st RD, 2nd FD)

Skate Canada Next Gen Competition (Gatineau, QC July 17-18, 2026 Cara Moir for IAMO)

Anderson/Dawson 4th place (8th RD, 1st FD) Eby/Stark 10th place (11th RD, 9th FD)

Championnats québécois d'été (Pierrefonds, QC August 6-9, 2026)

Lauriault/Le Gac Robinson/Portz Veillon/Brandys

not a whole lot new here, but Marjorie saying she and Zak were coached by Jean-Luc a good bit, and that they requested him a lot was interesting - so i guess you can ask for the coaches you prefer to work with at IAM? and as suspected, the pre-NHK competition they'll do is more likely to be a senior B because the Challengers don't fit schedule-wise. and how he said world ranking points are a consideration because skating later makes it easier for judges to give you higher marks, and that there's a build throughout the event. i always did like that he would give perspective that was both very specific and bigger picture in his commentary,

Jackie Wong commented that Olivia and Tim took time to mesh and understand each other. Marjo and (i just reflexively typed Zak, i'm so used to their names going together😅) Jean-Luc are different, though, in that neither of them need to level up in skill to skate with the other, and neither had to get used to a new school

JL mentioned Kaitlin:

the entry lists for the first JGP in Xi'An, China are out - between the dance teams assigned to this event and the substitutes listed, the teams in the mix for the JGP series for the US and Canada:

CAN 🇨🇦 Charlie Anderson/Cayden Dawson Chaima Ben Khelifa/Julien Levesque Madeleine Ann Breau/Kurtis Che Laurence Briere/Earl Jesse Celestino Victoria Carandiuc/Andrei Carandiuc Summer Homick/Nicholas Buelow

USA 🇺🇸 Hana Maria Aboian/Daniil Veselukhin Jane Calhoun/Mark Zheltyshev Marian Carhart/Denis Bledsoe Sophia Feige/Wiles Middlekauff Grace Fischer/Luke Fischer Clara Fugate/Warren Fugate Anaelle Kouevi/Yann Homawoo Rylen Lukanin/Patrick O'Brien Annelise Stapert/Maxim Korotcov Aneta Vaclavikova/William Lissauer

Jasmine Robertson and Chase Rohner are on the sub list but announced their split today France has 13 junior teams on their list 😯 maybe the effect that P/C had on young skaters wanting to try ice dance? did VM and DW have similar effects on generations of skaters after them

Rika Kihira & Shingo Nishihyama also announced their programs -

RD: Golden Hour and This is What Falling in Love Feels Like - JVKE

FD: Mon Dieu, Song for the Little Sparrow

choreo: Romain

Raffaella Koncius trains at MIDA - their skaters talk about such long hours - she says she's at the rink daily from 7:00 am - 4:00 pm. part of this is off ice but still seems longer than IAM and IAMO skaters say when they talk about their schedules

found an older interview with more detail -

“We usually skate from 8-2 with breaks here and there. Then on Tuesdays/Thursdays we have ballet, Monday/Wednesday is workout, and Fridays are pilates. We have all three coaches every day for about an hour, and then we also skate by ourselves”.

Glad Scott didn’t give up on Tessa in 2008…

Scott not splitting from Tessa in 2008 when they'd been 2nd at Worlds earlier that year seems normal and practical. what feels unbelievably avoidant and unfortunate is that he didn't go see her, that they didn't communicate, that he apparently didn't reassure her - that caused all sorts of problems and painful misunderstandings down the road. the other weirdness was that Marina was already bringing in tryouts for him, but that's another story

deciding to split when you don't know if you'll have a next partner has to be complex. so even though it doesn't feel great that Hannah's saying Ye's mistakes at 4CC and the Olympics led to ending the partnership, i have to think there was more to it if she didn't see another quad together. it also wasn't great that she named Paul Ayer, but one of the interviews from media day said there was a group tryout with 7 women/5 men from IAM who were all looking for partners - there aren't many available ice dancers on their level, so it would be stranger if Hannah and Paul hadn't had a tryout?

coaches would be involved in helping their students find new partners, and it doesn't sound like the IAM coaches encouraged any splits? besides Romain running his mouth, it sounds like they did what they're supposed to

after such a rough 2nd half of 2025, i love that they're having such a great 2026. and that she says "i'm a fan of us" after the interviews over the years where she said she struggled with feeling like enough

“I’m a fan of us,” Carreira said. “Any day in training when we’re working super hard and everything feels like it’s flowing—those days are really fun and really rewarding, sometimes more so than the big competitions. You feel like you gave it your all and everything worked out.”

and that they feel like this about their Milano FD:

2026 Next Gen results - this was so fun - juniors can grow so much from season to season

Homick/Buelow - (Evita) it's bigger music than Ghost and asks them to stretch and be more dramatic. it's hard to tell on the stream, but their ice coverage looks bigger than last season. this program has voiceover announcing Evita's passing midway through. in last year's FD Nicholas's character had also passed. making art is vulnerable in that it's personal whether you intend it or not. it's poignant and understandable if a huge loss is expressed through your creative work. Mitch Islam seems like an excellent coach - he comes off really well in the Gabby Daleman documentary, too

Gans/Pak - (Tron Legacy - Daft Punk) this program showed a little bit more than the RD did where there's still work to be done on matching lines, but they're off to such a good start

https://mskating.com/articles/hannah-lim-zachary-lagha-interview

good interview with a lot of info. overall it feels respectful of their previous partnerships, but they are pretty candid - she says she had tryouts with a few people and names Paul Ayer but says "it was Zach, no hesitation"

he says "I think she's [Hannah] the most talented girl in the field right now"

and it's unclear if he and Marjorie were split when Zak called Hannah to feel out skating with her. Hannah says the whole school knew she and Ye had split, but she didn't know if he'd split with Marjorie

Hannah says she'd already decided to split with Ye after the Olympics because 4CC and the Olympics were disappointing, and he asked to finish their career together at Worlds

they're showing only their RD at CQE and will be showing both programs at a Quebec comp in October (not sure what that would be - Georges Ethier is Sept, sectional championships is Nov). Romain made their RD and Patch is also working a lot with them on it. Marie-France made their FD. Hannah says she barely saw Romain so far in her career til now, which is surprising - he made their RDs in 2022, 2023 and 2024

some of this interview has been out there already? but the new:

"Our plan is to be ready for [NHK],” he continued, adding that they would probably do a competition at the end of October as part of their preparation. 

there's no Challenger at the end of October - Budapest Trophy is October 15-18, but there aren't any others til mid-November. so would they debut at a senior B, or in Budapest?

Baker added that they have bigger goals in the longer term. “We definitely want to win National Championships this year. I mean, we would love to be on a Four Continents podium. We want to be in the top 8 at Worlds, because we really want to give ourselves and also other athletes for the future an opportunity to be competing at a high level in ice dance. We have some amazing teams.