Trophee Eric Bompard 2014

The poster for the 2014 Trophee Eric Bompard looks like the cover of a best-selling novel. It's by far the most stylish poster of the Grand Prix series, and why shouldn't it be? France has always been the place where beauty and elegance thrive. Thus it's the perfect venue for a figure skating competition to be held in.

The poster also boasts with 'the best skaters in the world', which might be a bit far fetched as the only World champions supposed to compete in Bordeaux, Cappellini and Lanotte, withdrew a week ago. But this is ice skating and 'best in the world' doesn't just mean World title holders.

The Poster
Photograph: International Skating Union
The category that gets the closest to the advertised 'créme de la créme' is the ladies'. Julia Lipnitskaia and Elena Radionova are both competing here - yey, I'm getting my wish of seeing them face each other! Consequently, Ashley Wagner might be scowling at her lucky stars because it seems wherever she goes this season she has to face two brilliant Russians.

The pairs aren't far behind with Olympic medalists Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov bound to conquer and destroy in Bordeaux. The hosts also have a shot at the podium through Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.

The same could have been said a couple of years ago about Florent Amodio when he was quickly climbing the ladder of success. Today unfortunately, France's best bet for a medal in the men's event will be lucky if he gets close to the podium. Especially because there's three titans he would have to defeat to win the gold: Tatsuki Machida, Denis Ten and Maxim Kovtun.

Finally, with the Italians deciding to take some times off to fix the squeaky gears of their new programmes, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron look pretty certain for the dance gold. Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue will most likely climb the podium as well, but on which step will also depend on how Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier perform.

Comments

  1. Unknown20 November 2014 at 18:16

    I'm only interested in ladies competition. 3 other competitions are easy to predict (and I guess that nothing will go wrong - as at COC)
    as for Radionova and Lipnitskaia, they will fight for gold, either way, they both would still make it to GPF.
    So we will have (at least) 4 Russian ladies at GPF (well... like last year :))))) it's totally like RusNats in advance
    _TheGothicEme_

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