Camden Pulkinen
 Pulkinen at the 2024 World Championships | ||||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | March 25, 2000 Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S. | |||||||||||||
| HomeΒ town | New York City, New York, U.S. | |||||||||||||
| Height | 5Β ft 7Β in (1.70Β m) | |||||||||||||
| Figure skating career | ||||||||||||||
| Country |  Β United States | |||||||||||||
| Discipline | Men's singles | |||||||||||||
| Coach | Alex Johnson Rafael Arutyunyan | |||||||||||||
| Skating club | Skating Club of New York | |||||||||||||
| Began skating | 2005 | |||||||||||||
| Highest WS | 20th (2021β22) | |||||||||||||
| Medal record | ||||||||||||||
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Camden Pulkinen (born March 25, 2000) is an American figure skater and he is the 2024, 2025 U.S. bronze medalist. He competed at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics and is the first male figure skater to compete on behalf of Team USA in the men's singles event at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. He is the 2017β18 Junior Grand Prix Final silver medalist, a two-time JGP Austria champion (2017, 2018), and the 2018 U.S. national junior champion. He finished within the top five at the 2022 World Championships and within the top six at the 2018 World Junior Championships. He is the former world record holder for the junior men's short program. He graduated from Columbia University in May 2024.[1]
Personal life
[edit]Pulkinen was born on March 25, 2000, in Scottsdale, Arizona.[2] His older sister, Elena, has also competed in figure skating.[3] Pulkinen's father is of Finnish and French descent, and his mother is from Thailand.[4] He attended Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona.[5] Pulkinen attended University of Colorado Colorado Springs part-time for a few years before transferring to Columbia University in August 2022, where he studied psychology and economics.[1]
Career
[edit]Early career
[edit]Pulkinen began learning to skate in 2005.[2] He competed on the juvenile level beginning in the 2010β2011 season. He moved up to the intermediate level in 2013β2014 and to the novice ranks the following season.
2015β16 season: Junior international debut
[edit]Pulkinen moved up to the junior level in the 2015β2016 season. He was coached by Karen Gesell at the Coyotes Skating Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.[6]
After winning the Golden West Championships, he was nominated to represent the United States at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Hamar, Norway.[5] He placed seventh at the competition, held in February 2016.
2016β17 season
[edit]Pulkinen relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado in June 2016,[7] where Tom Zakrajsek, Becky Calvin, and Drew Meekins became his coaches.[8]
His ISU Junior Grand Prix (JGP) debut came in October 2016 in Tallinn, Estonia; he finished ninth at the event. In January 2017, he won the junior silver medal at the 2017 U.S. Championships.
2017β18 season: Junior Grand Prix Final silver
[edit]Making his senior international debut, Pulkinen placed eleventh at the Philadelphia Summer International in early August 2017. He then returned to the junior level, winning gold at a 2017 JGP competition in September in Salzburg, Austria. A month later, he took silver at a JGP event in GdaΕsk, Poland, and qualified to the JGP Final in Nagoya, Japan. There, he won the silver medal at the JGP Final. After that, he won gold at the 2018 U.S. Junior Championships. In March, he competed at the 2018 World Junior Championships and placed sixth.
2018β19 season: Senior international debut
[edit]In early August 2018, Pulkinen placed fourth in the senior ranks at the Philadelphia Summer International. Competing in the 2018β2019 ISU Junior Grand Prix series, he won gold in Linz, Austria. At his second JGP event, he won the silver medal in Ostrava, Czech Republic, setting a world junior record in the short program in the process.[4] His placements in Linz and Ostrava qualified him to the 2018β19 Junior Grand Prix Final in Vancouver, Canada.
Pulkinen next competed at the senior level at the 2018 CS Alpen Trophy, his debut on the Challenger series. He placed fourth in the short, sixth in the free, and sixth overall. At the 2018β19 Junior Grand Prix Final, Pulkinen placed first in the short program, but sixth in the free skate. As a result, he dropped to fifth place overall. Pulkinen commented afterward that he believed he had not trained the free skate sufficiently.[9]
In late January 2019, he finished twelfth at the U.S. Championships, placing eighth in the short program and fifteenth in the free skate. He was nevertheless named to the U.S. team for the 2019 World Junior Championships. He placed first in the short program there, winning a gold small medal, but struggled again in the free skate, where he placed ninth. He finished eighth overall.[10]
In May 2019, Pulkinen announced that he had left coach Tom Zakrajsek to train under Tammy Gambill and Damon Allen.[11]
2019β20 season: Grand Prix debut
[edit]
Pulkinen began his first full senior season at the Philadelphia Summer International, where he placed fifth. He also placed fifth at the 2019 CS Autumn Classic International.
Pulkinen made his