The reigning World Junior bronze medalists, Kristina Gorshkova and Vitali Butikov, are part of a group of young and promising Russian ice dancing teams and will make their senior debut this season. Although the Russians originally had hoped for more than the bronze at Junior Worlds this past March, it was in fact an accomplishment after all they went through last year. Around the end of June 2007, Butikov broke his left ankle while playing soccer during an off-ice training camp in Sochi in the south of Russia. On July 3, their coach Tatiana Kuzmina was killed in a tragic car accident in Moscow along with her 13-year-old daughter, Alexandra.
"It was a shock. It was so unexpected," Gorshkova said of the loss of their coach. "Elena Anatolievna (Tchaikovskaia) pulled us out of this. She found a new coach for us, Ksenia Gennadievna Rumiantseva and Petr Viatcheslavovitch (Durnev). After Vitalik broke his foot and went back on the ice for the first time, I thought, 'we won't be able to go to any competitions, not to the (Junior) Grand Prix, nothing'. We had very little time, and we didn't have (new) programs or any practices of compulsory dances."
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