Shibutanis take circuitous path back to prominence

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You're teenage siblings in a discipline where the major championship medalists long have been older -- twentysomethings at least -- so critical are performance maturity and adult passion to excellence in ice dance. 

It's only a year after you missed the podium at the 2010 World Junior Championships, and suddenly there are world bronze medals around your necks, which are all of 16 and 19 years old.

No one has done this before, going from the junior level to the world dance podium in a season. In fact, the best jump anyone can recall from junior to senior worlds was the sixth-place debut by Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir the season after becoming world junior champs.

Sure, you were a distant third at those 2011 World Championships to compatriots Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who went on to win Olympic gold, and their Canadian rivals, who were already Olympic and world champions.

But the road between you and more glory then seemed very short and straight.

If only it had been that way for Maia Shibutani and Alex Shubutani.


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Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

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Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

BOSTON - The news that figure skating competition would begin at 10 a.m. at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea left the two leading U.S. women singles skaters resigned to deal with situation, although Ashley Wagner adopted that attitude more grudgingly than 2014 Olympic teammate Gracie Gold.

“This is all fresh to me, and right now I’m annoyed, because it’s a difficult thing to ask the skaters to do,” Wagner said after her Tuesday evening practice before the World Figure Skating Championships that begin Wednesday at TD Garden.

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EXCLUSIVE: Figure skating in morning at 2018 Olympics

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EXCLUSIVE: Figure skating in morning at 2018 Olympics

Figure skaters will be getting early wake-up calls at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta confirmed exclusively to Globetrotting that all competitions will begin at 10 a.m. at the 2018 Pyeongchang, South Korea, Winter Games.  Day-of-competition final practice will be earlier in the morning.

With the 13-hour time difference from New York, that will put the events in prime time in North America.   It will not be as favorable for Japan, where the sport's popularity now is the highest in the world.

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Yu-Na Kim, Yuzuru Hanyu, Javi Fernandez and friends: how the Toronto Cricket Club became skating mecca

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TORONTO - Put more than a dozen highly decorated figure skaters on the same practice ice at the same time, and there is bound to be some friendly in-your-face stuff.

Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernández and Nam Nguyen will do quadruple jump after quadruple jump, each trying not to be the first to pop a jump or fall. Gabrielle Daleman and Sonia Lafuente will do the same with triples.

What each wants most, though, is to do well enough that Brian Orser, or one of his fellow coaches at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, rings the 16-inch brass bell that hangs outside the glassed-in, computerized music room on one side of the ice surface.

That sound is the reward for anyone who does a clean run-through of a competitive program in practice.

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Absence makes the art grow stronger for skater Yuzuru Hanyu, coach Brian Orser

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TORONTO - It was the final week of February, and the fan mail for Yuzuru Hanyu sat in a pile on the floor of Brian Orser's office at the Toronto Cricket Club.

The stack was nearly 2 feet high, testimony to how long it had been since Hanyu last was around to collect it.

It also was evidence of the unusual training arrangement between the leading men's figure skater in the world and the man who has coached him to an Olympic gold medal, world title and three straight wins at the Grand Prix Final -- the most recent with one of the most remarkable performances in the sport's history.

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