Lucca DIJKHUIZEN (NED) | Junior Women Free Skating | Gdansk 2025

Our next skater represents the Netherlands, Luka de Kysen. Luka, so calm, cool and composed off the ice. We saw her in the last Ice Tree Surfers and she looked incredibly serene. Good way to feel. She skates the free program till no time to die. Mark, when you mentioned before this young woman skated the program, how calm she was backstage when we were back in this. You could see how calm she was when she jumped in. Just a matter of fact, there was no question, there was no worry. She just did those elements. Now, I think that obviously there's work to do in connecting to the music a little bit more. And I think the choice of music wasn't bad because it was sort of this one level. So she could get all the technical elements, some collector points on that side. Understand that, okay, I'm not going to collect as many points on the other side, but I know where I'm going to get the triple left, triple toe right there. It was interesting as we were watching. So here, the triple loop. There's just indisputable confidence about the landing of the jumps here. The triple flip, a little tighter than the others. But I was watching Luka and thinking, oh, I'd really like to work on her components as we see that lovely double axel. But I know that if the job here was obviously to showcase what she's capable of in practice regarding the TES score. The triple loops, double axel, double toe, just job done. As we see the flip now, you don't want to distract with me honing in and better skating skills at present. That's now a different stage of the development. She has laid down an amazing skate for this athlete. Later, there's work to do. But that was a fabulous example of the collaboration that she has with Yolanda Franken and Thomas Kennis, the coaches. The hard work that has been done. And we are going to see a ginormous score change from the 77 that she had in Ankara. Exactly. Ginormous. Really big. She's the best. 103.05. Still pretty calm. Second in the pre-program. But the total competition score of 153.30. Very, very talented young skater. Master the jumps, no question. Work to be done in other areas. But what a great job. Really good.