Versluis, Matthias

Matthias was born on July 18, 1994 in Genolier ^[2] from a Finnish mother and a Dutch father ^[3] . His family moved to Finland when he was six months old ^[3] . Since 2018, he has been studying physiotherapy ^[4] .

Early years

Versluis began learning to skate in 2002 ^[2] . In 2008, he made his debut in the junior Grand Prix series , becoming the twentieth in the Czech Republic ^[5] . A few years later, the skater performed at two world championships among juniors in 2012 and 2013 , falling into the free program at both tournaments ^{[6] [7]} .

In December 2013 Verslois became the champion of Finland for the first time in his career. He was supposed to represent his country at the European Championships , but starred due to a knee injury received in training on January 9, 2014 ^[8] .

On April 1, 2016, it became known that Matthias and Julia Turkkila formed a dance couple ^[9] .

2016/2017: Ice Dancing Debut Season

The first international tournament for the new couple was the NRW Trophy competition, which took place in November 2016, where they took sixth place ^[10] . In the same month, they took thirteenth place in their first tournament in the Tallinn Trophy 2016 Challenger series ^[11] . This was followed by the Finnish Championship, where the newly minted Finnish couple won silver medals. At the beginning of February 2017, athletes performed in Alma-Ata at the Winter Universiade , at the competitions they skated not completely unsuccessfully and took eighth place ^[12] . In mid-February, a Finnish couple performed at the Bavarian Open in Obersdorf , where they took their place in the top ten.

2017/2018

Matthias and Julia took part in several tournaments of the Challenger series. First they became tenths at the Lombardia Trophy 2017 ^[13] , then the Finnish couple became fifteenth in the home tournament ^[14] . In November, they won bronze at a tournament in Austria , which was their first medal at the international level ^[15] . In December, they again became the silver medalists of the Finnish championship.

2018/2019

The couple began the new season with three competitions in the Challenger series: they finished sixth at the Lombardia Trophy 2018 ^[16] , seventh at the Ondrej Nepela Trophy 2018 ^[17] and sixth at the Finlandia Trophy 2018 ^[18] . In October, the duo won silver at the tournament in Minsk ^[19] .

In November, Matthias and Julia made their debut at the Grand Prix series stage, becoming the sixth at the home stage ^[20] . The following month, they first became champions of Finland and were selected to participate in the 2019 European Championships . In Minsk, the couple stopped a step away from getting into the top ten, becoming eleventh ^[21] .

with Julia Turkkila

with Julia Turkkila

• Julia Turkkila and Matthias Verslouis on the official website of the International Skating Union .
• Matthias Verslois on the official website of the International Skating Union .