Kaya TIERNAN (USA) | Junior Women Free Skating | Gdansk 2025

Our first skater represents the United States of America, Kaya Tiernan. Kaya had a fantastic short program, perhaps surprising many to find herself in this top group. She utterly deserves to be here following that wonderful performance yesterday, hoping for the same in her free skate. She'll skate a free program to Gladiator. Kaya Tiernan opens the final group in the women's free skate in Gdansk at the Solidarity Cup. As I say, she was the final competitor from America, 12th at that U.S. Junior Women's Junior Grand Prix Selection competition, and making it here to the top group. As I mentioned in the short program, the history of this skater with her mother, who was a three-time Olympian in women's senior figure skating. I wonder, love to know from her mom, if she's more proud now of seeing her daughter out there skating, representing America on the international scene, than anything that she achieved. I'm sure she's just beyond proud. You know, you never know the twists and turns of life and where things are going to take you, and would she have expected herself to be in this position, you know, in her first time out in the Junior Grand Prix. But what a wonderful experience, lots to be learned here, as we see a nice triple lutz to open the program, and the triple loop, good flow in the landing there. Good speed coming up in that triple lutz, reloads, up into the double axel, and sets herself up for the second one. There's only three elements under review, so that is good news from the technical panel. And two of those, or one of those is a spin, two are jump sequences, we'll take a look. Yeah, so it's good, it's just the quarter on the triple toe in which she took fault, but other than that, everything's nice and tidy. And what was so impressive, as her coach Alex joins her, is that the fall on the triple toe didn't deter Kaia, she came back with a triple sacro, didn't let her derail her, and I imagine that for Kaia, the experience of being on the practice ice with the likes of the skaters that have that increased experience will have been so beneficial, and everything that her coach and her mom will say will be corroborated by what she sees here. And you won't know what she has learned from this competition and this experience, and she can say, oh this was so much fun, this was great, I really enjoyed it, but how much do you learn from this until later? You don't know, do you change anything when you go back home? I don't mean the program, but do you change how you see things, or how you train or whatever? Is there a new desire to come back on this and improve that much more? Do you believe in yourself more? What are the things, what are the benefits that you gain from this type of experience? And you know, you've got great coaching staff that say great things, a mother that's experienced it themself, she's bound to have been, you know, in this world a great skater, but now this is a very personal experience that Kaia has given herself. I'm just thinking about pigs in the kiss and cry, wondering. Let's take a look at the scores. 108.19, that's second in the three program. Now we see a smile, that's good. With a total competition score of 165.24, that'll put Kaia Tiernan from the United States overall in second place. Well done team. Well done, Kaia.