Scottish skaters set to defend national titles at British Figure Skating Championships

Scottish skaters will be vying for the podium in ice dance and pairs

Anastasia Vaipan-Law and Luke Digby from Dundee during last year's World Figure Skating Championships.

Scottish skaters are set to defend their national titles as the British Figure Skating Championships gets underway this weekend.

The ice dance competition is set to be won by Scottish skater Lewis Gibson and Lilah Fear, who have already won the national title five times – and last week scooped a gold medal in the NHK Trophy Grand Prix competition in Japan - while Dundee pairs skaters Anastasia Vaipan-Law and Luke Digby will also be looking to retain their title.

Gibson, from Prestwick, and Fear, are ranked in the top few ice dancers in the world and will be vying for a spot on the podium at the Grand Prix final in China just days after British nationals, as well as at the European Figure Skating Championships in the new year and the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal in March.

However, new to the senior ice dance circuit this year are Phebe Bekker and James Hernandez, who fared well at last year’s Junior World Figure Skating Championships, coming fourth.

The duo, who train in the US with former British ice dance champions Nicholas Buckland and Penny Coomes, will be hoping to be selected for a second spot at Europeans and worlds, to compete alongside Fear and Gibson.

The women’s title will be up for grabs following the retirement last season of Dundee’s Natasha McKay who was named British champion six times. Runner up to McKay last year was Kristen Spours, however, Nina Povey will also be fighting for the national title this year. Both women’s calculations for selection for the British team for Europeans are just a few points apart.

Dundee pairs team Vaipan-Law and Digby, who competed for Britain at the World Figure Skating Championships last season, will be looking to win the national title for the third time. Swindon’s Lydia Smart and Harry Mattick are the only other pairs in the competition.

Simon Briggs, Vaipan-Law and Digby’s coach at Ice Dundee – who until McKay’s retirement, has coached the women’s singles national winner every year since 2011 - says the pair are working towards a strong performance at the national championships to set them up for this season’s international competitions.

"That will be their goal, to retain the title and just keep pushing forward, building the profile a little bit,” he says.

Both Vaipan-Law and Digby and Smart and Mattick have the minimum required scores for the European and World Championships, however, while there are two British spots available for Europeans, there is only one for Worlds – which Vaipan-Law and Digby hope to win.

"We have one spot for the World Championships, which will obviously be determined upon by the calculation process that they [sporting body British Ice Skating] use,” says Briggs. “But at the moment, we're we're in a good position. We've just got to keep ourselves focused, because the World Championships the following year is obviously the first call for the 2026 Winter Olympics.”

Last year’s men’s competition winner Graham Newberry will be missing from this year’s national championships due to an injury. Newberry, who has won the men’s title four times before and has been quoted this season saying he aims to be the first British man to land a quad jump in competition, last month returned to the US to train with his father and coach – himself a former British champion.

Edward Appleby will be likely to lead the men’s competition, with Dundee’s Elliott Thompson also competing for the title. Appleby, however, needs to reach a minimum qualification score needed for the free programme at Worlds, meaning Newberry could still have a chance of representing Britain at that competition, having already achieved the minimum scores last season.

The senior competition will take place on Saturday and Sunday.