Skate Canada 2021 – Predictions

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Women

Kamila Valieva will be making her Grand Prix debut this weekend. Following her recent win at Finlandia Trophy, which included a 3 quad free program, it’s safe to say she’s the favourite to win this event.

Six women, including Valieva, have triple axels in their jumping arsenal. Valieva, Wakaba Higuchi, Mana Kawabe, Alena Kostornaia, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Alysa Liu have all attempted the jump this season.

Don’t count out: Mai Mihara, Mana Kawabe, Haein Lee

Men

After his shocking loss at Skate America last week, Nathan Chen will be skating to prove he’s still the top U.S. men’s skater. However, it remains to be seen if back to back competitions will help or hinder him.

Coming off his recent win at Finlandia Trophy, Jason Brown will also be looking to keep his momentum up this season as he hopes to make the Olympics. Two clean programs from him will always guarantee high marks, we’ll have to see if he once again podiums with no quads.

As proven by the few competitions that have already happened this season, the men’s event can really take any turn. Keegan Messing and Evgeni Semenenko recently finished fourth and fifth respectively also at Finlandia Trophy but in the short Semenenko finished eleventh and in the free Messing finished seventh.

Don’t count out: anybody apparently because men are a mess

Pairs

Sui/Han are the event headliners here and favourites to win at the Olympics.

Pavliuchenko/Khodykin make their return to the big stage. They competed in the short program at the second stage of the Russian Cup and before that, won a bronze medal at nationals. Pavliuchenko was diagnosed with mononucleosis in March and the pair missed test skates in September due to a back injury Khodykin had.

This will also be the first domestic battle between Moore-Towers/Marinaro and James/Radford.

Ice dance

Gilles/Poirier and Guignard/Fabbri have both competed in Challenger events this season and the total scores were within 3 points of each other, with Gilles/Poirier getting the higher score. Adding on to that their Worlds bronze medal, and they’re in prime position to win here.

Third place could be between a few teams. Smart/Diaz were only 1 point away from the bronze medal last week at Skate America and found out their placement in the mixed zone where Diaz said “We have another chance next week, we’ll fight for it there.” Fear/Gibson, Davis/Smolkin and Green/Parsons have all already medaled at international competitions this season and will surely be aiming for a medal here.