World junior champs Kemp, Elizarov start road to 2030 Olympics at Skate Canada

Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov’s road to becoming world junior figure skating champions started with a trip across the provincial border.

The Winnipeg skaters were competing in singles when COVID-19 shut down rinks in their hometown. Elizarov was prepared to leave the sport to study computer science at the University of Manitoba when coach Kevin Dawe, who saw a pairs skater in his strong build, suggested he try the discipline with Kemp.

The duo travelled to Regina for a two-week tryout in 2021, taking advantage of Saskatchewan’s looser lockdown rules. By the end of the first week, they had built a short program.

“We were like, ‘What is happening? We don’t know anything about pairs,'” Kemp recalled. “That’s kind of how it started.”

They didn’t know it then, but the newbies were on the path to becoming a winning pair.

Five years later, the 18-year-old Kemp and 22-year-old Elizarov are making their senior Grand Prix debut on Friday at Skate Canada International in Kelowna, B.C., and treating it as their first step toward the 2030 Olympics.

“In previous years we would take it year by year and see how we progressed because we were very new to pairs. We started in 2021, so we didn’t have any big goals or long-term goals,” said Elizarov, who still studied at the University of Manitoba for 18 months before giving school a break.

“I feel like after we won Junior Worlds, we sat down and said we want to work for the next four years and work toward 2030.”

The Winter Games in the French Alps have been their stated goal since March, when they topped the podium in Estonia to become Canada’s first world junior pairs champions in 48 years. It’s a feat that seemed improbable when they were still getting the hang of lifts, twists, throws and death spirals.

Kemp and Elizarov were still relatively new to pairs when they earned silver in their international debut at the 2022 Junior Grand Prix in Latvia, just 14 months after partnering.

“Everything was just a shock,” Kemp said. “We were so focused on learning everything that we had no idea what we were about to do or the potential that we had.”

They followed Dawe in moving from Winnipeg to Toronto’s Granite Club in the summer of 2023, then won silver at the Junior Grand Prix Final and their first junior national title the following season.

So why were they such a great match? Kemp highlighted their shared roots in Winnipeg’s low-profile skating system, where carving out a career in the sport felt like a long shot.

“Skating in Manitoba, there’s not a lot and your hopes are kind of to get to (Skate Canada) Challenge, maybe nationals. Even that is like a stretch,” she said. “Then that’s kind of it, and you just quit. Everyone kind of has the same path, unfortunately. I think (Elizarov) understands where we’ve come from.”

“She forgot to say I’m funny,” the charismatic Elizarov quipped. “I keep things light on the ice. She’s the focused one, and I’m quoting things from ‘Modern Family’ or ‘New Girl’ or ‘Borat.'”

He also said Kemp has helped him unlock another gear.

“The biggest thing that I see in Ava is she’s so driven and determined, and I wouldn’t say I wasn’t like that … but she definitely taught me how to push myself (to) the extreme,” he added.

There have been major challenges along the way — Elizarov underwent surgery for a collapsed lung in 2023, while Kemp has worked through her share of back and ankle injuries — but Dawe has watched them level up from one season to the next.

“What I just kept seeing year after year is there was an improvement in all areas of the skating and a want to keep going,” Dawe said. “That’s when I knew there was really, really something special, because it’s very hard to see those two athletes with those common goals and that common drive to keep pushing themselves forward.”

The goal this year is to start bridging the gap to the top senior teams. Kemp and Elizarov flew to Hungary for a weeklong camp with renowned pairs coach Dmitri Savin in late July and spent the summer working to squeeze more points out of their lifts and twists.

So far, the work is paying off. After a fourth-place finish at Nebelhorn Trophy on the Challenger Series, Kemp and Elizarov earned their first senior international gold earlier this month at the Tayside Trophy in Dundee, Scotland.

Elizarov called it a big confidence boost, but knows a greater challenge lies ahead at Skate Canada International.

The Grand Prix is figure skating’s top series. Skaters compete in a maximum of two of six total events — Kemp and Elizarov are also assigned to Skate America in Everett, Wash., Nov. 13 to 15 — with the top six entries in each discipline advancing to the Grand Prix Final in China in mid-December.

The rising Canadians believe a podium finish is possible in Kelowna, but say the pressure is off.

“We are confident and I would say we don’t have any expectations on us,” Elizarov said. “We just want to do our best and show off to the crowd.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2026.

Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press