Mishina & Galiamov Biggest of Four Pair-Ups of Past Two Months

Junior Grand Prix Champion teams up with lower-ranked competitor, two former partners find new ones in Germany; new American team announces itself.

This winter, skating fans everywhere have been shocked by not one, but two mid-season splits. One was simply a distant number-two German team. But the other were the reigning Junior Grand Prix Finale Champions, who would have gone to the World Junior Championships the favorites to win. The latter initially wasn’t supposed to be effective immediately, but the team ended up splitting without competing again anyway.

Now, three of the four skaters have found new partners. The German partnerships are slightly older news, the second of them confirmed back on the 23rd. But this week, the amount of new pairs for next season’s scene rose to four. Not only did one newly-single skater reveal her new partner, but so did an American man who’d been looking for one since last summer.

Mishina Announces Partnership with Galiamov

Back in January, Vladislav Mirzoev announced his intention to leave Anastasia Mishina by putting a profile up on a partner search site. Initially, the two of them planned to compete at Junior Worlds first. But then they pulled out of Russian Junior Nationals and were not named to the Junior World team.

Now she’s the first of the two of them to find a new partner, presenting herself with Aleksander Galiamov on Instagram. When one English-language comment asked if he was her new partner, she confirmed he was.

This also brings news of Galiamov’s split from Nika Osipova. With her, he won the junior title at the Volvo Open Cup, a minor international event, back in November, their and his only international appearance. They came in ninth of eleven pairs at Junior Nationals, though they won bronze at the Russian Cup Final a couple of weeks back. Whether or not the decision to split happened before or after that we may never. Either way, Galiamov’s traded up.

But he certainly has the potential to match his new partner. They’re young enough to spend years more on the junior scene, if they so desire. If all goes well, they could easily triumph over it, before making a go at a senior career together.

One German Pairs Team Splits in Two

Mirzoev wasn’t the only man to announce an end to it in January. So did Ruben Blommeart, and he refused to even skate the season out with Mari Vartmann, despite pleas from their coaches. It was especially dismaying because had they competed at Worlds, it’s possible they and top German team Aliona Savchenko & Bruno Massot could’ve earned Germany three berths for next year’s Olympics. Now, barring more unforeseen events, Germany will almost certainly have two exactly.

No one was sure either could even find a new partner in Germany, and when neither could likely get a foreign partner citizenship in time for the Games. But now they both have. Early in February, Blommeart announced his new partnership with Annika Hocke. Hocke, eight years Blommeart’s junior at 16, has mainly skated singles, but does have some pairs experience. She says openly she wants a chance at the Olympics, which pairs gives her. It’s hard right now to guess what happens after that, though they could go on a while.

It took Mari Vartmann a little longer, and she came at it from the opposite end. Her new partner is Matti Landgraf. He competed internationally in both singles and pairs, and won a handful of medals in the latter. But he retired back in 2013 and has been skating on cruise ships. Since he only got a year off from his contract, it doesn’t look like this partnership means to last longer. Vartmann will be 29 then; she may have already decided to retire herself then anyway.

This means both teams will want that second Olympic berth. The last senior German team on the scene is one both could easily beat, if they’re as good as Vartmann & Blommeart were together. But one pair would still have their hearts broken next year.

Max Settlage Has New Partner

One can ask if a man as old as Blommeart should be skating with a lady as young as Hocke. But he’s very far from the only one. Friday saw the announcement of a similar partnership by Max Settlage. He too is 24. His new partner, Winter Deardorff, is also 16.

Settlage had a long partnership with Madeline Aaron. They had a good junior career, winning the junior national title and two JGP medals, and their first year on the senior level included three top five Grand Prix finishes (pairs were allowed to compete in three events that season), and the pewter at Nationals. But in 2016, while they repeated the Nationals, injuries hindered them. They split in August, even after they’d been assigned to this year’s Grand Prix, and when Settlage ultimately couldn’t beat the clock to find a new partner for this season. (Aaron didn’t try; she may or may not come back).

Deardorff has only skated singles, and only moved up to the Novice level this year, where she didn’t even make it out of her region. With those results at that age, a switch to pairs does makes sense for her. She’s unlikely to go anywhere in the cutthroat U.S. singles field, but if she and Settlage can make it work, they could go further together. But one wonders if a teamup such as this one will last. If it does, they’re likely to have more success after this coming Olympic season, after possibly some other pairs retire.

Next: Chinese Skaters Win Over Half the Medals at the Asian Winter Games

Then again, any of these four pairs teams could fail to even last the summer out. But hopefully, they’ll at least give this coming season a shot in which to make their first marks.