A clip of the performances of Vanessa James and Morgan Ciprès circulated on Facebook recently and if you didn’t click play try to find it now. Watching this breath-taking performance gave me a real buzz! I felt so proud and fascinated. I played it to as many people I could while standing next to them so I could see their reaction. But did you know?…
Vanessa James, born 27 September 1987, in Ontario, Canada, is a French pair skater. She has a twin sister Melissa James, who has also competed in figure skating. Her father is from Bermuda, where she lived until age 10 when her family moved to Virginia, USA. She began skating with her sister after watching the 1998 Winter Olympics.
In 2005 James began representing the United Kingdom internationally. In 2006 she won gold at the British Championships and silver in 2007, becoming the first British figure skating champion of Black African descent.
In September 2010, James began a partnership with Morgan Ciprès, until then a singles skater. With Ciprès, she is the 2017 European bronze medalist and a five-time French national champion. They have also won medals in Grand Prix and Challenger Series competitions.
In April 2017, they competed as part of Team France at the 2017 World Team Trophy in Tokyo, Japan; although their team finished sixth overall, the pair scored personal bests and placed first in both segments of the pairs’ event, ahead of Russia’s Evgenia Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov.
(Information edited from Wikipedia.org)
