Dauphin’s Brezden breaks through

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This article was published 04/12/2022 (1027 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The fifth time proved to be the charm for Breken Brezden.

The Dauphin teen will be heading to the Canadian figure skating championships in January after four unsuccessful attempts to make the cut.

Brezden’s 10th-place result over the weekend at Skate Canada Challenge, the national qualifier held at Winnipeg’s Seven Oaks Arena, was no small feat considering only 18 of 38 junior women’s competitors advance to the national stage.

It’s expected Manitoba’s promising junior pair, Ava Kemp and Yoni Elizarov, will join Brezden in Oshawa for the championships despite Kemp’s ankle injury that forced their last-minute scratch from Challenge.

The Winnipeg duo had earned a bye to Canadians with impressive showings in international Grand Prix competition this fall, and expectations are Kemp will be cleared to resume training in the next week or so.

While Brezden accomplished her main goal on Saturday, her long program skate wasn’t the picture-perfect performance she had imagined after an impressive start the day before.

“This is my best finishing placement at a Challenge competition, the first time I’ve been top 10 in any of the categories I’ve competed in. So, overall, I can’t really be super, super upset, but I really would have liked to end on a stronger note,” the 16-year-old said.

Brezden landed her three opening triple jumps, then fell on a triple loop attempt. Subsequent jump landings were messy, which dragged down her total competition score (138.54).

“I’m definitely not satisfied. I would have liked, obviously, to have landed everything. That’s the ultimate goal. You want to go out and have a clean program at big competitions like these.

“Now that I know I’m going to Canadians, I’m happy to go back home and really work hard at getting both these programs to have minimal, no mistakes.”

B.C.’s Kara Yun took the Challenge title with a total score of 170.87, ahead of Ontario’s Lulu Lin (165.84) and Quebecer Aleksa Volkova (162.91). The medallists were in a class by themselves with Volkova’s score 10 points higher than the nearest challenger’s.

In the past several years, Brezden had been making five-hour round trips to Virden to train. To eliminate those draining road trips, she made the move to Hamilton, Ont. this summer and will continue to train there until the Canadian championships begin on Jan 9.

Patty Hole, Brezden’s longtime coach in Virden, and her new coach in Hamilton, Jen Jackson, carefully crafted a plan that would help their student succeed at Challenge.

“We got past the first hurdle. She’s prepared to step in at Canadians really strong. She’s on track. She’ll stay here (in Dauphin) for a week. We’ll work a little bit on choreography, get a few things done, then send her back (to Hamilton) to get ready for nationals,” Hole said.

Brezden will be the only singles skater representing Manitoba at Canadians after Skate Winnipeg’s Emma King, 20, unravelled in her senior women’s final free skate on Saturday to finish 31^st, far back of the top-16 result needed to advance.

King wasn’t the only skater to have a rough go in the finale. Overnight leader Kaiya Ruiter, 16, from Alberta, crashed four times and slid to sixth in the overall standings.

Seizing the moment was Ontario’s Fiona Bombardier, daughter of three-time Canadian women’s titleholder Josée Chouinard and twice national pairs champion Jean-Michel Bombardier.

The 17-year-old climbed from third to first with a total score of 176.50.

Amy Shao Ning Yang, the 2020 novice level Canadian champion from B.C., claimed silver (168.78), while Quebec’s Sara-Maude Dupuis jumped from seventh to third (167.65).

In Oshawa, the trio will face formidable competition from reigning Canadian champion Madeline Schizas and former champ Gabby Daleman, both of whom had byes to nationals.

One hundred and sixty up-and-coming figure skaters, some of whom could be destined for Canada’s 2026 Winter Olympics team, competed at Skate Canada Challenge.

Next to Nova Scotia with its lone competitor in the junior men’s event, Manitoba fielded the second smallest contingent, reduced to two after Kemp, 14, and Elizarov, 18, withdrew.

Today, the duo should have been on a plane to Italy as one of six pairs world-wide who qualified to compete in the ISU Junior Grand Prix Final, but those plans were scuttled, too.

The couple will instead turn their attention to rebounding from her injury with the Canadian championships looming. There, a top-three finish would seal the deal for their assignment to the junior world championships.