The Future of Figure skating Around the World!!!

[Smiley]

There are so many young and good skaters coming up who do you think the best ones are?
I think Jeff Buttle is number one on the list, as well as all those Japanesse girls!! They are soooo good!!
Joannie Rochette is also very good and may be the brightest light in Cdn Ladies... Also, Louanne Donovon and Danielle Kahle seem to have bright futures ahead ofthem.
For pairs I think the Zhangs will be winning senior internationals compeition in the near future!!

[Trillian]

In the ladies event, the U.S. has some great young talent. Beatrisa Liang and Louann Donovan both did well at junior worlds this year considering that neither of them had much international experience. I've also been pretty impressed with Alissa Czisny, and she's young enough to have plenty of time to develop. The Japanese girls are also looking strong, though in most cases we have to wait for their presentation to catch up with their jumps before they can be competitive at the senior level. It also sounds like Joannie Rochette could develop into one of the best Canadian ladies in quite a while, and Canada has some other young ladies who've shown a lot of potential.

In the mens event, I don't know if there are any countries with a lot of depth at the junior level right now; some of the Russian guys have done well on occassion but blown it at other times, so I wouldn't really count on them. It sounds like some excellent individual guys (Buttle, Kevin van der Perren, Brian Joubert, Stephane Lambiel, Johnny Weir, etc.) are developing in different countries.

Among the pairs, China has a great hope for the future with the Zhangs. Other than that, it's pretty hard to tell since promising young teams split up all the time. The same is true in dance, but Russia has enough strong young skaters that I'd imagine (after a possibly slow period coming up) they'll be a major force once again. Italy seems to have been doing a great job of developing skaters in this discipline, but they can't keep their best teams together.