#francois pitot

Francois Pitot (FRA)

The first JGP event was a hot mess, as usual. Especially the junior men. The women actually did pretty well, for the most part. Ahsun Yun and Seoyeon Ji both won the costume competition. They were both so well-dressed. I really liked Ahsun’s FS to The Mummy. It was a good but unique choice, and she had a fantastic skate after a rough short. Kaiya Ruiter surprised me. She’s quite juniorish, but in a good way. She’s a solid performer and held up really well under pressure, so hopefully she can lead Canadian women’s skating over the next few years. Clare Seo and Lindsay Thorngren are so different: Clare’s very artistic with solid skating skills, while Linday’s more technically minded. But they both did really well here. Clare got nailed with a few URs, and Lindsay really delivered with her jumps to get the gold medal. But they’re both really talented and I’m excited to see where they go. 

The men were... pretty much a disaster, as I feared. The last two skates in the free were particularly rough. It’s probably because Courchevel is like a zillion miles above sea level and everyone was exhausted. Ilia Malinin had a fantastic short (although that cover of Billie Jean needs to die) and a spectacular morning practice, landing 4 different types of quads. His free was not nearly as solid: a fall on a quad sal, a popped quad toe, and a popped triple loop off of a triple lutz. He looked so tired. Corey Circelli started off well in the short, but his free skate was hard to watch. Lots of falls. I am happy for Francois Pitot and Lucas Broussard. Both of them don’t have the huge tech content of a lot of the Russian and Japanese men, so they managed to rise to the occasion here with solid skates to take JGP medals.

Francois Pitot (FRA)