Olivia Bazlova, a 13-year-old figure skater representing Cyprus, has finished in the top 10 at two consecutive ISU Junior Grand Prix events in her first season in the junior category, placing seventh in Ljubljana and eighth in Gdansk last week.
She scored 163.84 points in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and 166.03 points in Gdansk, Poland, facing 35 other skaters at each event. Her team described the results as among the most notable for Cyprus in international junior women’s figure skating in recent years.
Her total of 166.03 in Gdansk was a personal best, as were her short programme score of 55.13 and her free skate score of 110.90 there. She also finished third in the junior women’s event at the Tallinn Open this year.
Bazlova has lived in Cyprus since early childhood and trains in Limassol, according to her team.
She says in her profile that the rink in Cyprus is too small for her to stay long, and that she is usually home only for Christmas and her birthday, spending the rest of the year training and competing abroad. “If we had a big ice rink here, I would never want to leave,” she says.
There are almost no rinks or specialised coaches in Cyprus, she says, so she and her mother, who is also her personal coach, travel often to other countries to train. She is currently working on the triple Axel and exploring some quadruple jumps.
