Three years into their partnership, Audrey Lu and Misha Mitrofanov have taken time to build a high level of trust with each other. Now, as they start their senior career, it's time to build that trust with the international skating world.
"We just moved up, so we're like the little fish in a big pond," Mitrofanov said. "We just need to start creating the name, and we create a name through good skating."
Lu, 16, and Mitrofanov, 21, feel like they have gone through enough as a pair to have a strong enough relationship to take on the challenges of the senior level.
The Plano, Texas-based pair's first competitive season was cut short by a shoulder injury to Mitrofanov at the 2017 Midwestern Sectional Figure Skating Championships. Last fall, their next attempt at the event was nearly derailed due to illness.
"As that sectionals came up, I got sick before the week of sectionals and he got sick during the week," Lu said. "So, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, we can't compete again.'"
The pair persevered through it, earning first in juniors to advance to their first U.S. Figure Skating Championships. In San Jose, Lu and Mitrofanov shined, earning a record score for the junior pairs event with a 173.31 overall score. The long saga that preluded just their first appearance at the U.S. Championships was enough to prove to the team that they could get through anything.
"We fought through it and we made it to nationals, so now I'm just like, oh we've literally been through injuries and sickness and we've gotten through all of that and we still made it to nationals," Lu said.
"It definitely taught us to fight no matter what," Mitrofanov added. "We both stayed strong together, and we relied on each other to keep on pushing."
Last season was a big milestone in Lu and Mitrofanov's trust-building process. Lu admits that her jump to pairs skating in the spring of 2016 was nerve-wracking. The two had
a mutual coach in Aleksey Letov. Lu had been training singles when Mitrofanov's previous partnership with Ashlee Raymond ended. Mitrofanov had multiple partner offers across the country and in Canada, but was dedicated to sticking with Letov in Texas. One day, Letov recommended that Lu and Mitrofanov try some pairs elements off-ice to see if there might be a match under their own rink's roof.
"At first, I was really scared, and then I got on the ice and we tried a few things for a couple of days," Lu said of their tryout. "Then, I didn't really want to do it, so I stopped. I competed my first competition for singles and then after that, we thought about it more. It was a good opportunity for me, so we all sat down in a room together and we were talking about what safety concerns and all that stuff. Then we said, 'Okay, we'll try it for a year.' We started and at first, I was really scared, but then I got better and better and started to overcome all my fears."
It wasn't just Lu who had some doubts about the throw and lift-heavy world of pairs skating.
"We sat down with her mother and that's when we explained to them how we're going to make sure that her safety is our number-one priority and that Aleksey would never make us do anything that we're not capable of," Mitrofanov explained.
The duo started training together, working on trust just as much as they worked on death spirals, lifts and twists. Even with the potholes they kept facing at sectionals, they rose quickly. After their record-setting performance at the 2018 U.S. Championships, Lu and Mitrofanov finished fifth at the World Junior Championships.
That impressive finish led them to two early season ISU Challenger Series events, the U.S. International Classic, where they earned silver, and Nebelhorn Trophy, where they finished fifth. They have also been assigned to two ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating events, NHK Trophy, Nov. 9-11, and Internationaux de France, Nov. 23-25.
"It's our first year at senior and I was just expecting us to get maybe one assignment because there's a lot of more experienced pair teams out there," said Lu. "Then when we got two (Challenger Series events) already and we did fairly well on both of them, I was really, really happy."
Mitrofanov had faith that they would do well when they first hit the international stage. "We just understood that we have the mentality of, it doesn't matter where we are. We could be in another country. We could be at our home rink. Aleksey always tells us we just do what we do in practice. That's the mentality we have."
They trust Letov, they trust each other and now they trust that the hard work that they have put on will be rewarded on the international stage. But just like it took trials, errors and precious time to get to where they are in their current relationship, they recognize it will take just as much competition-wise for them to reach the senior podium.
"Our goal is, we're not really looking at placements right now, because we understand we are new," said Mitrofanov. "We're mostly just going to be focusing on showing good choreography, showing good elements, good skating, and just building a name, a reputation for us."
