We look back at the extremely impressive Junior Worlds 2024 championships, including the showdown between Mao Shimada and Jia Shin in the Women’s event, an expected win from dance team Neset & Markelo, shaky success for pairs team Metelkinda & Berulava, and star making performances from Rena Uezono and Anthony Paradis.

 

This week, we’re recapping the 2024 World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Taipei, Taiwan. While we haven’t always been avid junior competition viewers, this competition may be the catalyst that gets us more in tune with them!

From a brilliant, burgeoning rivalry between Mao Shimada and Jia Shin in the Women’s competition, to the rising star performances from the gold medal-winning dance team of Leah Neset & Artem Markelov, there was a lot to be excited about.

Women’s Competition

The premier event of Junior Worlds had to be the Women’s competition, thanks to a ridiculously deep field of talented women who, for the most part, all turned in fantastic skates.

The gold was expected to come down to either Japan’s Mao Shimada and South Korea’s Jia Shin — and these two women made it a nail biter. With her poise, flow, and skill, Jia Shin won the short program over Shimada. However, in the free skate, while both skated near-flawlessly, Mao edged out Jia with her quad toe loop and overall technical excellence.

With competitions like these, we cannot wait to see these two compete head-to-head for years to come.

Jumping into third with an astounding free skate, Japan’s 13 year-old Rena Uezono lit up the arena and made her way to a bronze medal.

Rounding out the top ten were all fantastic skaters — from Finland’s Iida Karhunen to Sherry Zhang from the US and Canada’s Lulu Lin. We even saw solid skates from those much further down in the ranks, including Josephine Lee from the US, Kaiya Ruiter from Canada, and the Kim twins from South Korea.

All in all, this competition made us optimistic for the future of Women’s skating.

Pairs Competition

As predicted by many, the gold here went to the talented Georgian pair of Anastasia Metelkina & Luka Berulava — though this win was not as dominant as many would have expected.

This team has a solid chance of medaling at Senior Worlds in a few weeks, and this free skate was not one they would have hoped to have here leading into that competition. Still, they took the title by more than 12 points and have some time to look at what went wrong before heading to Montreal.

The silver and bronze both went to young American teams — Olivia Flores & Luke Wang and Naomi Williams & Lachlan Lewer, respectively. Both teams had exceptional short programs, and flawed but solid free skates. Flores & Wang, however, brought quite a bit more difficulty to their skate and looked strong overall. These are certainly teams to watch for in the future!

Men’s Competition

This was the closest competition of the event, with gold being taken by Minkyu Seo by just over a point. This talented South Korean had a solid short program, but a slightly less compelling free skate.

However, the silver medalist — Japan’s Rio Nakata — was in 5th after the short, so needed made up quite a bit of ground to win the free skate and take the second spot.

In with the bronze, Adam Hagara from Slovakia became the first Slovakian skater to earn a Junior Worlds medal.

While there were many other strong skaters in this field, the one we felt the most excited about is Canada’s Anthony Paradis. This young skater came in 15th, but scored remarkably high PCS marks and had the most identity and overall skating quality on the ice in this field.

What he lacks in jumps he makes up for in commitment — and we eagerly await a time when he can bring it all together for a run at international podiums.

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