It has been exactly one year since Nino Langella and Vera Bondareva won their one and only GrandSlam together right here in Helsinki. While Nino has moved on to pastures elsewhere in the world of dance, Vera is set to reappear together with her new partner Andrey Gusev in the GrandSlam Latin that gets danced in hall 4 of the Messukeskus Expo on Sunday 6 March. Interesting! Last year, the four GrandSlams that came after Helsinki were marked by an outright battle for succession to the hegemony that Langella and his previous partner Khrystyna Moshenska had exercised for a very long time, winning three World and two European titles plus 14 GrandSlams altogether. Victories in the regular legs were evenly split between two couples: Gabriele Goffredo – Anna Matus, MDA, and Armen Tsaturyan – Svetlana Gudyno, RUS. They arrived at December’s “Showdown in Shanghai” with two wins each and were considered to have equal chances for the third and decisive victory in the Final. Gabriele Goffredo and Anna Matus were the ones who finally put the icing on the cake by winning Shanghai only three weeks after they had claimed the World Championship title in Vienna, AUT. Armen and Svetlana were obviously disappointed with how their successful year came to an end, but they vouched right then and there that they would fight back the first opportunity they get. This brings us to the here and now, to the 2016 GrandSlam Latin in Helsinki – where the next chapter is due to be written in the story of a rivalry between two equal opponents. Are there other couples that could stage the upset, defeating either of the odds-on favourites and taking first in the first leg of the Series? Of course – and quite a few at that! But just as last year, Marius-Andrei Balan and Khrystyna Moshenska, GER, are not one of them. They danced a World and an International Open so far in 2016, winning both convincingly, but they are not among the close to 100 couples entered. Neither will Timur Imametdinov and Nina Bezzubova be dancing in this leg! The Germans were third in the Shanghai Final and are reportedly absent due to an injury! A 9-camera production in High Definition covering the decisive stages of the GrandSlam Latin Helsinki. The programme is made up of four parts: the full-length semi-final, interviews with the finalists, the full-length final and interviews with the medallists. Produced by the WDSF Communications team in collaboration with the host broadcaster YLE and the Finnish DanceSport Federation. Music by casa-musica.de