Nina Pinzarrone

Nina Pinzarrone (born November 24, 2006) is a Belgian figure skater. She is a two-time European bronze medalist (2024 and 2025) 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 and 2025 Belgian national champion and a two-time (2020, 2022) national junior champion.

Personal life

Pinzarrone was born on November 24, 2006, in Brussels, Belgium. Her father, Mario Pinzarrone, is of Italian origin, while her mother, Laurence Novalet, is a Belgian from Brussels. She has an older sister, Lily, who is also a figure skater. Pinzarrone'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. She is currently studying for a degree in nutrition.

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. She began working with her coach Ans Bocklandt at age 4 in 2011.

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 a hip injury, subsequently revealed to be a double stress fracture.

After recovering, 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 she 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 the event's history. Pinzarrone finished eleventh.

2023–24 season: Grand Prix medals and European bronze

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 she 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. She 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. She was third in that segment and placed 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.

In the lead-up to the 2024 World Championships in Montreal, Pinzarrone was plagued with nosebleeds that hindering her training and performance. In advance of the free program, she had her nose cauterized without anesthesia and skated with a cotton ball in her nostril. She finished fifteenth and said afterward: "It is difficult to skate at full speed for 4 minutes anyway and that was even more difficult now. I did my best until the end and I think I did well in my circumstances."

2024–25 season: Second consecutive European bronze medal

Pinzarrone started the season by competing on the 2024–25 Grand Prix series. She finished fourth at 2024 Skate America. Shortly following the event, Eric Christian von Fricken, who composed one of the pieces of music that Pinzarrone used for her free program, took to social media accounts to praise her performance. Going on to compete at the 2024 Grand Prix de France, Pinzarrone would finish the event in sixth place.

Pinzarrone then competed on the 2024–25 ISU Challenger Series, winning gold at the 2024 CS Tallinn Trophy and silver at the 2024 CS Golden Spin of Zagreb. She won her second consecutive Belgian national title in January, though unusually, she did not compete at the main event, as it was held only ten days before the 2025 European Championships; the Belgian federation gave its top women's skaters the additional opportunity to compete at the Golden Spin instead and count their scores from that competition.

At the end of January, Pinzarrone competed at the European Championships. She earned a season's best in the short program despite receiving an under-rotation call on her triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination and placed fourth, with two points separating her from the skaters in the top three. Pinzarrone expressed disappointment afterward and said that she was having issues with her boots that were causing inflammation in her foot. She placed third in the free skate after receiving under-rotation and quarter rotation calls on six of her jumps, and she moved up into third place overall to win her second consecutive European bronze medal. Pinzarrone said that she wanted to work on her jump rotation ahead of the 2025 World Championships but that she was "thrilled" to have won bronze.

Ahead of the World Championships at the end of March, Pinzarrone continued to be bothered by inflammation and pain in her right ankle, for which she received treatment. At the World Championships, she placed eighth in the short program and seventh in the free skate, finishing seventh place overall. With this placement, Pinzarrone earned two berths for Belgian women singles skaters to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics. She said that she was satisfied with her performance, especially as she struggled to remember her choreography during the beginning of the program due to the loud crowd, and that she was happy that Hendrickx could join her at the Olympics.

In early May, Pinzarrone fractured a toe during training and had to take time off to recover. Her coach speculated that her foot may have been weakened after her issues earlier in the season with inflammation.

Programs

Competitive highlights

Detailed results

Senior level

Junior level

References

External links

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Nina Pinzarrone
at SkatingScores
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinzarrone, Nina
2006 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Brussels
Belgian female single skaters
Belgian children
Belgian people of Italian descent
European Figure Skating Championships medalists
21st-century Belgian sportswomen