King and Kemp have challenge to their pair skating crown

BRITISH No.1 pair skaters David King and Stacey Kemp have continued their exemplary national championship form - but there are pretenders to their throne hot on their heels.

Canadian-based duo Erica Risseeuw and Robert Paxton, who have only been skating together for six months, produced an excellent display in their debut appearance in Nottingham in the short program.

King and Kemp, three-time champions, were the only pair to compete last year and having scored 50.26 points look odds on to make it four.

But Risseeuw and Paxton continued to go from strength to strength in their fledgling partnership and having notched 46.58 points, refused to rule out an upset in tomorrow's long program.

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"We're a very young pair in terms of how long we've been together," said Paxton. "I've had a few different partners but we're really coming on nicely together now.

"We arrived in the UK from Canada on Thursday, did a little bit of practice then came straight to the competition so we're really pleased with our scores.

"And our performance as well is something that we can be really proud of. We get to go to the Europeans next month which will be fantastic experience having been together for such a short time.

"So who knows what will happen tomorrow if we keep doing the best that we can."

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While King and Kemp show no signs of relenting their impressive recent form after a difficult start to the season that saw Kemp sidelined for ten weeks with glandular fever.

"We're on good form at the moment at we just want to keep that going all the way to the Europeans," said King. "We're treating this as a bit of a warm up for that.

"Our score is alright but there's no reason the judges couldn't have put everyone's a bit higher to give us all a bit of a lift before the Europeans.

"But as long as we feel like we're skating well and performing to the best of our ability then we're happy and that's how it felt today."

GERARD MEAGHER