Ivo Gatovski, who turned 16 on January 17, collected enough points after earning silver medal at Dragon Trophy in Ljubljana and is part now of the Bulgarian team for the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Sofia. He repeated his last season’s success in Ljubljana and was the only skater among six Junior Men, coming there with same mission, to reach the planned target.
“My greatest wish now is to skate clean the short program in front of our own crowd”, said the young Bulgarian, who made his ISU Junior Grand Prix debut this season for isujworlds2014.bsf.bg. It will be also his appearance at Junior Worlds. Ivo Gatovski ‘s qualification was the last unknown in the roster of the host country’s team.
Anna Afonkina will represent Bulgaria in the Junior Ladies. The young Russian is the star of Denkova-Staviski Club, where she works from the very beginning with Andrey Lutay – the famous disciple of Alexei Mishin, and two times Russian vice-champion (2007, 2008). Andrey Lutay got married to Albena Denkova’s sister Ina and leaves in Bulgaria.
There is “Russian Connection” also in the Junior Ice Dance couple, because Slaviana Tsenova has a partner from Ekaterinbourg – Egor Zaitzev. They are coached by Oksana Potdikova – a famous two-time World Junior medalist (silver in 1997 and bronze in 1998) in Ice Dance, competing for Russia with Denis Petukhov. Slaviana and Egor has been a couple for just two years, but they made their debut at the ISU Junior Grand Prix series and the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships still after the first season together. The last season they collected marvelous points, sufficient not only for the event here in Sofia, but also for the senior European Championships.
