Thursday, November 22, 2007

On November 17, 2007, at the 2007 Trophée Eric Bompard competition in Paris, France, American pair skaters Tiffany Vise and Derek Trent, a mirror pair team, became the first pair skaters in the world to land a throw quadruple salchow jump. The jump was ratified as clean by Technical Controller Ann Hardy-Thomas, and the International Skating Union officially proclaimed it the first in international competition on Monday, November 19th.

This jump had been attempted many times in competition before, most notably by Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao of China at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Vise & Trent had tried it unsuccessfully before, as had Canada’s Jessica Miller & Ian Moram and Russia’s Yuko Kawaguchi & Alexander Smirnov.

This is the first quadruple jump in pair skating. The first throw triple axel in international competition was performed by Rena Inoue and John Baldwin at the 2006 Olympics.