Recap: 2025 World Junior Championships
by Matteo Morelli
The ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships 2025 took place in Debrecen, Hungary, with twenty-five ice dance teams from nineteen countries showing the world their programmes for one last time this season.
The top three reflected the results from the Junior Grand Prix Final: Italy’s Noemi Maria Tali & Noah Lafornara won the title, making history for their country; they were followed by USA’s Katarina Wolfkostin & Dimitry Tsarevski in silver medal position, and Germany’s Darya Grimm & Michail Savitskiy in bronze medal position.
Event recap
Noemi Maria Tali and Noah Lafornara have only been together for two years, yet the progress they made from one year to the other is outstanding. This season, they won every competition they entered. The Junior World title closes their junior career in the best way possible, with them already projected towards their senior career, which starts with the Winter Olympic Games in Milan, Italy, where they train for most of the year.
“We have been juniors for quite a long time and it is finally time to move up”, Tali shared. “It is a new chapter and we just want to step right into it in the best way possible”.
Their gold medal made history for Italy: in fact, this is the first Junior World title for the country, across all four disciplines. This result is of incredible importance, something that probably both Tali and Lafornara knew had a chance to accomplish, but that still shocked them when becoming a reality.
“You read the names of those who won the first senior worlds or first Grand Prix Final, and now it is going to be us!”, Tali said.
“Honestly, I don’t know how to put it into words, to be the first ever Italian junior team to win Junior Worlds”, Lafornara added. “You always expect to read someone else’s name there, so the fact that it is our name now is unbelievable”.
They won the event with a total of 177.50 points, with a ten-point gap from second place and collecting new personal bests across the board.
“I think we could not be happier right now, we skated clean in both programs, but we make history in the meantime”, Tali said. “We have been skating together for nearly two years and it feels great”.
“We work all season on the same two programs, so being the final event, this is the final product, we wanted to give it justice and we feel that we did that”, Lafornara added.
Katarina Wolfkostin & Dimitry Tsarevski of the USA won the silver medal, with a total of 167.51 and new season bests for their free and total score.
“I think we did everything that we could have possibly done, we worked really hard for it and enjoyed it and there is really not anything else that we could have done differently”, Tsarevski said. “It was the last time we would do the programmes, and we just really wanted to end on a high note”.
Although this season they already competed at senior US Nationals (ending in seventh place), from next season they are ready to fully step up to the senior level.
“We have done a little bit of senior as well as junior this year, and they definitely have very different atmospheres”, Wolfkostin shared. “I feel like competing senior is really fun and we are excited to put our entire focus into competing senior”.
Team USA ended Junior Worlds with all three teams in the top ten: Caroline Mullen & Brendan Mullen finished in sixth place, followed by Hana Maria Aboian & Daniil Veseluhkin in seventh.
Darya Grimm & Michail Savitskiy of Germany won the bronze medal, their second consecutive one at Junior Worlds. With Matteo Zanni and Katharina Mueller with them as their coaches (they are yet to take a final decision on which coaching team to join), they collected a new personal best on their total score.
“I would say the best way to describe how we feel is relief: we are definitely super happy with how the season ended, with how we delivered the final product, especially considering our not so good preparation (due to him having to take a couple of weeks off for medical reasons)”, Savitskiy said. “We are glad the season is over and we are glad we could end it on a high note”.
Like the other medallists, they are also now bidding farewell to the junior field.
“Actually, I am really excited to move up to the senior level because we did one competition in senior this year and it was completely different than what we do in junior”, Grimm shared. “The podiums are different, the atmosphere is different, we had some really great couples on the competition and it was just amazing to skate alongside the top teams in senior”.
Ukraine’s Iryna Pidgaina & Artem Koval ended in fourth place with 158.93 points, jumping up one position from rhythm to free, and showing how they have consistently been at the top throughout this season.
France’s Celina Fradji & Jean-Hans Fourneaux, also at their last Junior Worlds, ended in fifth place, with 157.71 points. The top ten was completed by the Canadian teams of Sandrine Gauthier & Quentin Thieren, and Chloe Nguyen & Brendan Giang, in eight and ninth place respectively, and the other French team of Ambre Pierrer Gianesini & Samuel Blanc Klaperman in 10th.
Overall, the competition offered really good skates in a competitive junior field, with some teams showing outstanding progress from one season to the other, including the newly crowned gold medallists that were in seventh-place at last year’s Junior Worlds, the Ukrainian team going from 15th last year to fourth this year, and Belgium’s Sofia Beznosikova & Max Leleu, going from a 18th place last season to an eleventh-place finish this season.