2025-26 U.S. Ice Dance News, Updates & Discussion - Backstreet Boys & Spice Girls

[BittyBug]

China, Poland, and the UK will make the TE, but not the final. I think on paper, we're assuming that JPN and USA will be contending for the gold, ITA and GEO will be contending for the bronze, and that FRA and CAN are contending for the last spot in the Final, mostly based on a deficit for FRA in the Pairs event being greater than points gaps between Canadian Men's and Women's...

Who would have ever anticipated that GEO would become so competitive.

 

[Debbie S]

Who would have ever anticipated that GEO would become so competitive.

Given that the skaters are all Russian imports (except maybe Egadze?) it wasn't hard to see it coming.

If the war ends and Russians are allowed back in the ISU next season, I wonder if the current 'Georgians' will stay Georgian. Gubanova probably...she's no Eteri-bot...but I wouldn't be surprised if pairs and dance jumped ship back to the motherland.

ETA: Ooops, didn't realize M/B switched before 2022. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Davis/Smolkin 'return' to Russia.

 

[tony]

Given that the skaters are all Russian imports (except maybe Egadze?) it wasn't hard to see it coming.

If the war ends and Russians are allowed back in the ISU next season, I wonder if the current 'Georgians' will stay Georgian. Gubanova probably...she's no Eteri-bot...but I wouldn't be surprised if pairs and dance jumped ship back to the motherland.

Metelkina and Berulava both were skating for Georgia before the ban even happened, so I don’t see why they’d switch.

 

[kwanfan1818]

I don't see Davis/Smolkin returning to skate for Russia either.

 

[BittyBug]

Given that the skaters are all Russian imports (except maybe Egadze?) it wasn't hard to see it coming.

Russians have been dispersing to represent former Soviet countries since the collapse of the USSR, and there are Russian-born athletes representing many countries other than Georgia (Poland, Germany and Armenia, for example). But none of those countries has (yet) emerged as a skating powerhouse, whereas Georgia has, so I don't think it's as simple as Russian skaters switching countries.

 

[PRlady]

Russians have been dispersing to represent former Soviet countries since the collapse of the USSR, and there are Russian-born athletes representing many countries other than Georgia (Poland, Germany and Armenia, for example). But none of those countries has (yet) emerged as a skating powerhouse, whereas Georgia has, so I don't think it's as simple as Russian skaters switching countries.

But Georgian teams still have Russian coaches. Which, it pains me to admit, is a lot of skill even if methods are questionable.

 

[kwanfan1818]

So do Nagaoka/Morigumi and Hase/Volodin.

 

[Debbie S]

Obviously being Russian doesn't guarantee a TE medal. It depends on which skaters switch. But most Russians who switched to other countries hadn't been to the Olys. While Gubanova wouldn't have made the Olys competing against Eteri-bots, she was still a very good skater. Egadze is native Georgian (i think?) but has access to Russian facilities and a top coach.

 

[Karen-W]

Gubanova is likely to retire after this season or at least take a break. She's married now & likely wants to start a family like a lot of her Russian age-peers have done in the last year.

I can't see DavSmo switching back to Russia. They're making a nice move up the standings and have had good improvement at IAM. They will be contending for Euros & GP medals in the next cycle along with LopBri, SmaDie (if they don't retire), the Mrazeks and DemLeM. They'd lose that positioning and all momentum they've built by sitting out ANOTHER season just to switch back to Russia and fight for supremacy there.

As far as the TE event - KOR is the other country qualified, so LimQuan will be in the RD equation somewhere, though not the FD.

I'd forgotten that the USFS usually takes into account both the most immediate past Worlds' results AND World Standings when deciding who gets a TE assignment for the split disciplines. That could mean that CarPon are in for the TE FD regardless of whether ZingKol beat them at Nats. If ZingKol want the TE FD assignment, they should be hoping that GreenP beat CarPon for the 3rd spot.

@kwanfan1818 - couple of things about your WS projections -

1) CarPon are entered for Golden Spin, so they're going to pick up 54-81 incremental points by replacing the 189 from 2023-24 depending on whether they finish 2nd or 3rd in Zagreb (presuming that GuigFab win, CarPon will be battling DemLeM for 2nd/3rd).

2) GPF points replace GP points, so ZingKol are only able to pick up incremental points. They'll add a minimum of 210 (472 would replace the 262 they have from either of their GPs last season). SmaDie should overtake them after Euros - both teams will pick up some incremental points at Tallinn Trophy this coming week and drop their lower points from 2023-24 like CarPon will do with Golden Spin; but SmaDie should easily pick up at least 426 incremental points at Euros which is more than ZingKol will likely pick up at the GPF. Neither DavSmo nor TurkVers are going to pick up enough incremental points at Euros to pass ZingKol because they have higher points from their 2024 ISU Championships than SmaDie and they're both approximately 300 points behind ZingKol as it is.

I don't think there's any way, even with Euros points incoming, that the teams in the WS top 10 are going to be displaced before the Olympics, with the exception of LajLag, who don't have any upcoming Challengers where they can pick up pure points (they only have Budapest Trophy and 1 IC from 2023-24 in the IC points boxes) - but even LajLag are probably safe in the WS top 10 for the Olympics because, again, incremental points from Euros for teams like DavSmo and TurkVers probably won't be sufficient to displace them.