Nina Pinzarrone

Nina Pinzarrone (born 24 November 2006) is a Belgian figure skater. She is the 2024 European bronze medalist and a two-time ISU Grand Prix medalist, one of only two Belgian women to have medaled at those events. She placed eleventh at both the 2023 World Championships and the 2022 World Junior Championships.

At the domestic level, she is the 2024 Belgian national champion and a two-time (2020, 2022) national junior champion.

Personal life

Pinzarrone was born on 24 November 2006 in Brussels, Belgium. Her father Mario Pinzarrone is of Italian origin, while her mother, Laurence Novalet, is Belgian from Brussels. She has an older sister, Lily, who is also a figure skater. Nina's mother tongue is French but she skates in Flanders and goes to school in Dutch. Because her father is of Italian heritage, she studied the Italian language for a year as a fourth language but does not speak it.

Career

Early years

Pinzarrone began learning how to skate in 2010 at the age of three. She followed her sister Lily, who became interested after watching figure skating on television.

2021–22 season: International junior debut

Pinzarrone made her international junior and ISU Junior Grand Prix debuts in August at the 2022 JGP France II, the second of two JGP events hosted in Courchevel, France. She placed fifth in the short program and sixth in the free skate to place sixth overall. At her second JGP assignment, the 2022 JGP Slovenia, Pinzarrone replicated her short program and free skate placements from Courchevel but finished fifth in the overall standings.

Pinzarrone did not compete again until November when she handily won her second Belgian junior national title. Following her win, between December 2021 and February 2022, she claimed the junior women's titles at the Santa Claus Cup, the Icelab International Cup, and the Dragon Trophy. She finished seventh at the Challenge Cup in March.

In April, Pinzarrone competed at her first World Junior Championship. There, she was seventh in the short program but fell to sixteenth in the free skate after a series of mishaps, ultimately winding up in eleventh overall.

2022–23 season: International senior debut

Pinzarrone was assigned to her first Grand Prix event, the 2022 MK John Wilson Trophy, in July. In August, she received a second assignment, replacing South Korean skater Lim Eun-soo at the 2022 Skate Canada International. She later withdrew from both events due to hip injury, subsequently revealed to be a double stress fracture.

After recovery, Pinzarrone won the silver medal at the Latvia Trophy. Having acquired senior technical minimums, she was assigned to compete at the European Championships for the first time, alongside longtime Belgian national champion Loena Hendrickx. Her coach stated that her primary objectives for the event were to achieve the minimum scores to take Belgium's second berth at the World Championships later in the season. Pinzarrone underrotated the second part of her jump combination in the short program, but still finished sixth in the segment. She rose to fifth place after the free skate. She had the second-best technical score in the free skate.

Due to Hendrickx's placement at the previous year's World Championships, Belgium had three berths in the women's event in Saitama. Pinzarrone, Hendrickx and national silver medalist Jade Hovine all had the minimum scores necessary to attend, comprising the largest Belgian women's delegation in event history. Pinzarrone finished eleventh.

2023–24 season: European bronze and Grand Prix medals

Beginning the season at the 2023 CS Lombardia Trophy Pinzarrone finished ninth. Speaking of this event later, she would opine: "At Lombardia I really wasn't myself." She was also invited to attend the Shanghai Trophy, coming fourth of six skaters. She called the latter invitation "an amazing experience."

Making her Grand Prix debut following the previous year's withdrawals, Pinzarrone appeared first at the 2023 Grand Prix de France, where she finished fourth in the short program with a new personal best 65.74 points, only 0.99 points back of second-place Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia. She set another new personal best in the free skate (133.06), and rose to second overall. Her silver medal made her only the second Belgian woman to medal on the Grand Prix, after Hendrickx. Of the feat, she said: "It doesn’t feel real." The week before her second Grand Prix assignment she appeared at her first senior Belgian championships. With Loena Hendrickx withdrawing due to illness, Pinzarrone won her first national title by more than forty points. At the 2023 NHK Trophy, Pinzarrone placed second in both segments, but third overall, winning the bronze medal and qualifying to the Grand Prix Final for the first time. She said she had not considered this result a possibility at the start of the season, and added that it was "so cool" that both she and Hendrickx had qualified, the first time two Belgian women had done so. Pinzarrone went on to finish fourth at the Final.

Pinzarrone entered the 2024 European Championships as a podium favourite after her results in the first half of the season, and finished second in the short program with a personal best 69.70 points, less than a point ahead of third-place Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia, the defending champion. In the free skate, four of her jumps were deemed a quarter underrotated, coming third in that segment and placing third overall behind Hendrickx and Gubanova. With her bronze medal alongside Hendrickx's gold, Belgium had two women on the European podium for the first time, with Pinzarrone also only the second woman (after Hendrickx) to make the European podium.

Programs

Competitive highlights

''GP: Grand Prix; CS: Challenger Series; JGP: Junior Grand Prix.''

Detailed results

''ISU Personal best highlighted in bold.''

Senior results

Junior results

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinzarrone, Nina
2006 births
Living people
People from Brussels
Sportspeople from Brussels
Belgian female single skaters
Belgian children
21st-century Belgian women
Belgian people of Italian descent