Kaiya Ruiter was born on 13 May 2006 and is a Canadian figure skater.
24 Facts About Kaiya Ruiter
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Kaiya Ruiter is a two-time ISU Challenger Series silver medalist, the 2024 Canadian national champion, and the 2023 Canadian national silver medalist.
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Kaiya Ruiter was born on 13 May 2006 in Ottawa, Ontario, to parents Kris and Victoria.
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Kaiya Ruiter began learning to skate with her parents and sisters at age four on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa.
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Kaiya Ruiter officially began training at age six at the Gloucester Skating Club under Darlene Joseph.
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Kaiya Ruiter's family relocated from Ottawa to Edmonton in 2016 when Kaiya Ruiter was 10, and there she began training under Ravi Walia, coach of the 2018 Olympic bronze medalist Kaetlyn Osmond.
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However, ten months later, the family moved again, this time to Calgary, and Kaiya Ruiter began working with her current coaches, Jeff Langdon and Scott Davis, per Walia's recommendation.
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Kaiya Ruiter landed her first triple jump, a triple toe loop, in November 2018 and went on to learn the rest of her triple jumps and triple-triple combinations within a year.
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In January 2019, Kaiya Ruiter won the 2019 Canadian novice national title, setting a new national record for the novice women's event with a score of 139.57.
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Kaiya Ruiter's score of 159.07 points was a junior record for a Canadian woman.
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Kaiya Ruiter took the gold medal with a total score of 174.83 points, bettering her own national junior record and winning by a margin of 31.52 points over silver medallist Emily Millard.
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Kaiya Ruiter was the only competitor at either the senior or junior levels to successfully perform a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination and one of only a few to even attempt it.
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Kaiya Ruiter's score was slightly short of senior national champion Emily Bausback's winning score of 175.54, but would have surpassed it with the additional senior choreographic sequence included.
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Kaiya Ruiter was given additional international assignments for the remainder of the season, first winning gold in the junior event at the Bavarian Open.
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Kaiya Ruiter's season had a disappointing finish at the 2020 World Junior Championships in Tallinn, where she fell twice in the short program and did not qualify for the free skate segment, coming in thirty-first.
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At the first event, Kaiya Ruiter was third after the short program, behind Americans Clare Seo and Lindsay Thorngren, but overtook Seo in the free skate and won the silver medal.
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Kaiya Ruiter said she was "so proud" of the results.
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Kaiya Ruiter later developed scar tissue problems, and was unable to resume proper training for almost a year.
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Kaiya Ruiter was named as Canada's lone women's entry at the 2023 World Junior Championships.
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Kaiya Ruiter began the season by winning the bronze medal at the 2023 Cranberry Cup International.
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Kaiya Ruiter made her Grand Prix debut at the 2023 Skate Canada International and came tenth.
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Kaiya Ruiter was sixth in the short program at the Youth Olympic women's event, but struggles in the free skate saw her twelfth in that segment, dropping to eleventh overall.
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Kaiya Ruiter started the season by competing at the 2024 CS Denis Ten Memorial Challenge, where she finished seventh.
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Kaiya Ruiter then competed at 2024 Skate Canada International where she would come in eighth place before finishing seventh at the 2024 CS Warsaw Cup the following month.