Are you ready for Senior?

That's the year we were all waiting for.That's the year where we will finally see the widly popular Russian wonder-babies compete all season in the senior circuit. 

Adelina Sotnikova and Elizaveta Tuktamisheva  stole the show last year when they debuted in the grand prix events, but now they are elegible for European Championships and Worlds too.

Elizaveta Tuktamisheva had a massive senior debut last year, as she was the only one skater who won both of her grand prixs and qualified as first fot the final. Not that she was the most complete skater, but she had very solid triple lutz-triple toes and all the other triples on her hands along with lovely charisma and presence on the ice. After that, she won Youth Olympic Games that were set in Innsbruck last year. She had not done a season debut yet, but she showed her new programs choreographed by David Wilson few months ago where she showed to have improved her ice coverage and skating skills. There were rumours of a back and knee injury, but her coach Mishin have confirmed that she will attend Skate Canada.
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After becoming the biggest hope for the Russian federation and Junior World champion in 2011, Adelina Sotnikova slightly disappointed the expectations on herself and did not shine as everybody would have tought. Somebody supposed it to be caused by a growth spurt that created some technical diseases (Adelina had few problems on lutz and flip edges and on landing jumps and combos that used to be her trademark) and maybe she just needs to find her balance back.

She started her season at Nebelhorn Trophy where she ranked second behind Canada's Kaetlyn Osmond. Adelina has now programs that suit her much more than last year's ones, still, apart from the technical content which is not her best but not bad, she seems to be a little bit immature for the senior circuit that is actually filled by a lot of veteran skaters.

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But Russia is not the only nation to send talented girls to the senior events this year.

Talking about Kaetlyn Osmond, it seems like Skate Canada have partly "worked out" the lack in the ladies' category that the retirement of Cynthia Phaneuf had caused. The state of Canadian ladies is not the best of all times, but this young and fresh girl has all what it takes to be a protagonist of her nation's skating. As said before, she won Nebelhorn Trophy over Sotnikova with two technically solid and artistically brilliant programs. She has a free skate on "Carmen" which is usually a unfortunate choice as this music has been overused since 1988 (and actually it has rarely topped Witt's interpretation), but considering Kaetlyn's young age and her approach to it, this is not bad at all.

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Last but not least, Gracie Gold of US is going to be a top contender. She has already debuted in seniors at World Team Trophy 2012 and this year at US Classic, where Agnes Zawadzky won over her, and Skate Detroit. She has improved a lot both technically and artistically. She has now  a Rippon lutz and a triple flip-half loop-triple salchow in her repertory along with her trademark triple lutz-triple toe. She has a wonderfully choreographed short program in which every movements she does accentuates the music. As the short program is so impressive, the free skate is not tuned yet, but it can grow as its theme is very deep (the music is the soundtrack of "Life is Beautiful" that Jeremy Abbott used in 2011).

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So, a lot of promising young ladies are entering the senior events this season (you have to add Junior World champion Julia Lipnitskaya, who seems to be better than anyone else but is not age-elegible for worlds) but the field is going to be more challeging for comebacks and, above all, for the comeback of Yuna Kim.