Gran Premio D’Italia 2021 – Predictions

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Women

This week Maiia Khromykh and Anna Shcherbakova go head-to-head for the second time in less than a month. Khromykh won Budapest Trophy by just over 2 points and her free skate layout included two quads. Shcherbakova, who’s had an injury this summer, only attempted one quad – which she fell on and received both an edge warning and quarter-rotation landing call.

Loena Hendrickx and Mai Mihara come into the event with the next highest scores. Hendrickx’s only marked error at Finlandia Trophy was a messy landing on her opening combination jump in the short program. She also comes into this season after a fifth-place finish at Worlds. Mihara had an amazing competition at Skate Canada last week receiving only a ‘q’ call in the short program. Satoko Miyahara and Yelim Kim were only 1 point apart at Skate America, and if clean, could challenge for a top finish.

Don’t count out: Eunsoo Lim

Men

Men always feel like the hardest to predict – just see the ordinals from Lombardia Trophy and Finlandia Trophy this season.

Yuma Kagiyama’s ambitious four quad layout that he’s used so far this season is a good bet for first although there have been some slight consistency issues so far. Mikhail Kolyada has re-introduced his quad salchow back into his free skate which along with the other two quads in his free and high PCS scores, should land him on the podium – if clean, of course.

Dmitri Aliev and Boyang Jin also could make the podium with their technical content but neither have had an easy few months with illness and injury.

Whilst Daniel Grassl certainly has the technical content to finish high, it’s a matter of putting it all together. He credited his not-so-great skates at Skate America to jetlag (something quite a few athletes from both that event and Skate Canada did), so on home turf, we’ll see if he can execute it. Petr Gumennik has also had consistency issues but is coming off a strong win at Denis Ten Memorial Challenge last week.

Don’t count out: Junhwan Cha, Kazuki Tomono

Pairs

Sui/Han have the second of their Grand Prix events and are again, favourites to win. Aside from jump and throw errors, Peng/Jin had a good competition debut this season at Asian Open Trophy.

Third place is a bit harder to call. Della Monica/Guarise had a fairly good result at Worlds, but a slightly disappointing outing at Lombardia Trophy to start the season. They’ll be hoping a home Grand Prix can get them a podium spot. Artemeva/Nazarychev will be having their first real outing on a Senior Grand Prix, although they participated in the domestic Rostelecom Cup last season, and Pepeleva/Pleshkov are coming off a good, but not flawless, outing at Skate America.

Ice dance

Although their rhythm dance score from Finlandia Trophy won’t have been as high as they would have liked, Papadakis/Cizeron’s high free dance score keeps them the favourites to win with Hubbell/Donohue being their only potential competition.

Stepanova/Bukin’s last competition was the World Championships in March. Stepanova fell ill before test skates and the pair also withdrew from Finlandia in order to prepare more for this competition. Green/Parsons have been gaining momentum this season in order to challenge for the third Olympic spot, and are on the right path to keep improving.

Wang/Liu have been separated from their coaches in Montreal for a while because of the pandemic and only recently reunited with them in Italy prior to this competition. Their scores had dropped from their usual standard at Worlds and they’ll be looking to regain that prior form. Hopefully, some time with their coaches can help them get back their edge.