After skating together for just two seasons, Japan’s Ami Koga, 16, and Francis Boudreau-Audet, 21, will make their senior debut at the World Team Trophy. The duo were named to the team following the recent split of Narumi Takahashi and Ryuichi Kihara.

It will mark the last competition of a breakthrough season for the duo: they mined silver at the Bavarian Open, claimed the title at the International Challenge Cup in The Hague and followed that up with a very creditable sixth place finish at the World Junior Championships last month.

As with Utako Wakamatsu and Narumi Takahashi before her, Koga trains in Canada with Richard Gauthier, but her road there took a more circuitous route due to her family circumstances.

“I was born in Fukuoka and when I was still a baby I moved to China because my father is Chinese,” Koga explained. “My grandfather and my grandmother on my mother’s side are still in Fukuoka, so I used to go once a year for summer vacation when I was younger, but I’ve never lived in Japan.”

Despite spending most of her formative years in China, her parents made sure that she never lost the connection to the country of her birth. “I went to a Japanese school in Beijing, so the system of education was Japanese. The textbooks and everything was the same as in Japan.”

It was while she was living in China that Koga learned how to skate and, in a country renowned for producing world class pairs, it was perhaps no surprise that she soon found herself exposed to the discipline.

“Before I started pairs in China, I was a singles skater. I wasn’t that good, not like the Japanese skaters,” Koga smiled. “Always after my practices, they had the national team in pairs skate right so I’d often see them. Eventually I decided I want to try pairs. I spoke to my singles coach and she was actually teaching pairs as part of the national team. She introduced me and I had a trial with my previous partner.”

Koga began mastering pairs technique with her first partner Wenxiong Guo. The duo placed 10th at the 2011 Chinese Championships. “I didn’t know a lot about pairs elements. My partner who had experience before was teaching me so I just followed and listened to him. He had done about three or four years of pairs,” Koga said.

With a crowded domestic field in China, Koga made the decision to split with Guo and skate for Japan. Her search for a new partner brought her to Gauthier. “Richard coached Mervin (Tran) and Narumi, who were still together at the time, and I knew that Richard had a relationship with the Japanese Skating Federation,” she said. “I wanted to switch from China to represent Japan and so that’s how I got in contact with him.

Gauthier had been asked by the Quebec Figure Skating Federation to scout for new male pairs talent. He discovered Boudreau-Audet at a regional competition and Koga eventually teamed up with him.

“It’s funny because Richard told me before we got on the ice at Junior Worlds where he saw me for the first time,” Boudreau-Audet recalled. “The Quebec organization thought I might skate for Quebec, but it happened to be for Japan instead.”

Koga relocated from Beijing to Montreal with her mother in the spring of 2013 and the contrast between how skaters trained in China and Canada was an eye-opener.

“In China the skaters live at the rink. They train there, sleep nearby and don’t go to school. They just practice and it’s more controlled and organized by the country. In Montreal, the coach just comes to the rink and teaches us and then I go to school. Our lives aren’t controlled in the same way and the system is totally different.”

While Boudreau-Audet, a Montreal native, did not have to adapt to a completely new living environment, he did not have any experience as a pairs skater and had to learn from scratch. He has come a long way, but still finds certain aspects of the discipline challenging.

“The twist is the most difficult element for me. The throws and the twist are a lot about timing, but with a twist you have to make a good combination of your movements,” he explained. “You need to push with your legs, push with your arms and place your arms in the correct way. I would say the twist is kind of the trickiest element. When I first started, my lifts were terrible. I couldn’t do a lift at all, but I got it pretty quickly. I consider myself a pairs skater now. Once you start you cannot stop.”

Boudreau-Audet is full of praise for his partner who moved a whole continent to skate with him. “I like her because she is curious and she always enjoys the day,” he said. “She doesn’t get upset for no reason and she’s a hard worker. She likes to try stuff and always wants to learn new things. I’m pretty much like that too so we can learn from each other.”

With less than two seasons under their belt as a team, Koga and Boudreau-Audet are still trying to find their style. Training alongside world champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford gives them plenty of inspiration to keep on improving.

“We don’t have a specific goal of what we want to be, but my goal is for us to show pure skating,” Koga said. “It’s always fun training with top skaters. They do a lot of elements that we haven’t learned yet. Every day we are really impressed with them.

“It’s a bit weird to compare to Narumi and Mervin, but we are kind of the same style,” Boudreau Audet added. “Training with Meagan and Eric, it’s not only elements, but also just the skating itself. I am always thinking to myself ‘I want to skate like him! I want those deep edges.’ The first time I saw a split twist I went to Bruno (Marcotte) and told him that’s what I want to do.”

With every team that represents Japan where one of the partners is not a Japanese national, the thorny issue of whether or not they will be able to compete at the Olympics crops up, given Japan’s strict citizenship rules. For now Boudreau-Audet is not thinking that far ahead.

“That’s a big question. We’ll see over the years what is to come. We’ll see what happens at the next nationals. At the end of the journey, skating is not just about winning,” he said. “It’s more about being what you are going to be yourself later, after all this is done. The experience you have now is going to be something later.”

Following the World Team Trophy, Koga and Boudreau-Audet will begin preparing for next season, their first as senior competitors.

“We need to improve our elements, but I think the most important is to skate like we are seniors and to improve our lines. I feel I am still a bit rough on my skates,” Boudreau-Audet said. “And really, just to get along together on the ice.”