If one takes the last editions of the World Cup Standard as the reference, a clear pattern emerges. The dancers who are victorious in one of them launch their careers to new heights and tend to remain on an ascending trajectory for quite some time.

Dmitry Zharkov and Olga Kulikova, the uncontested #1 in the World Ranking Standard for the past four years, won their World Cup in Vancouver, CAN, back in 2011.

The current #2 and #3 won two editions each: Evaldas Sodeika and Leva Zukauskaite, the world #2 from Lithuania, won in 2014 and 2015. Francesco Galuppo and Debora Pacini, the Italians who are the #3, made it to first in Bassano (ITA) 2016 and in Johor Baru (MAS) 2017.

However, none of these couples will dance at the World Cup this year. One way of determining who the favorites – and the next “novae” – could be is to consult the Word Ranking Standard as of September 2018: #6, #8, #12 have entered for Chengdu. One of the three couples won the bronze medal in last year’s edition. Who? More about that soon!

While doing research for this piece, we discovered that the 2014 World Cup Standard was actually danced in Chengdu too. At the top, see Evaldas and Leva with their Tango in the semi-final. Masterful back then already!