Audrey Shin, Balazs Nagy forge unique pairs’ figure skating partnership

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Audrey Shin, Balazs Nagy forge unique pairs’ figure skating partnership

Over the three seasons after what seemed like a breakthrough bronze medal performance at Skate America in 2020, Audrey Shin had slowly lost both her confidence in the skills needed to be successful in singles and her motivation to keep doing it.

At the end of last season, his first in what seemed a promising partnership with Chelsea Liu, veteran pairs’ skater Balázs Nagy lost Liu when she announced on Instagram in late March she had ended the partnership to prioritize her mental health.

Because of those losses, Shin and Nagy found each other and a new career path in the sport.

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Reality check: Audrey Shin is what’s happening in U.S. women’s skating

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Reality check: Audrey Shin is what’s happening in U.S. women’s skating

The first thing Audrey Shin asked her parents in Colorado when they spoke by phone after she skated the short program at Skate America in Las Vegas was, “Did this actually happen?”

The “this” in question was the near flawless, self-assured performance that had put Shin in third place, beginning two days in late October that ended with her as the surprising star of her first senior Grand Prix event. But even her parents’ reassurance that they saw how well their 16-year-old daughter had skated could not assuage all of Shin’s desire to pinch herself.

“It was already on YouTube, so I watched it a few times in a row right after we talked because I was really proud of what I did,” she said in an interview last week. “After a while, it kind of finally sunk in.”

The disconnect between what had happened – and how well Shin would do again in the free skate to win the bronze medal – and what she had envisioned was understandable.

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