By Hiro Yoshida

Daniel Samohin announced himself to the skating world when he cracked the top ten at his first European Championships in Stockholm, Sweden last year. He followed that up with a very impressive 8th place at the World Junior Championships in Tallinn, Estonia in March 2015 marking him out as the real deal. When I spoke to him at the Junior Grand Prix Final in Barcelona, Spain last month, the whole surreal nature of being an object of attention all of a sudden was still fresh in the mind of the 17 year old.

“Europeans was an amazing experience. It was crazy because I didn’t expect the placement or my skate to be that good. Not because I didn’t believe in myself, but because I was still on and off on my quad and my Axel was actually not very consistent. I got to the competition and for that week it was really consistent. Before that, all those months I was practicing I could not do Axel. I was stepping out or falling and every time I did it in the program it wasn’t consistent. So when I did the Axel in Europeans last year I got really excited and that’s why I stepped out of the Lutz! It was really great for me and really opened up a lot of doors mentally because I was able to push myself more. It motivated me to work even harder than I had been.”
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