Denis Khodykin

Early years

Khodykin began learning to skate in 2004.^[1] He trained as a single skater until 2015. He then switched to pair skating and teamed up with Maria Bogoslavskaia, with whom he skated during the 2015–2016 season.^[3]

Khodykin and Daria Pavliuchenko teamed up in 2016, coached by Sergei Dobroskokov and Sergei Rosliakov in Moscow.^[3] The pair placed 5th at the 2017 Russian Junior Championships.

2017–2018 season: World Junior title

Pavliuchenko/Khodykin made their international debut in late September 2017 at a Junior Grand Prix (JGP) competition in Minsk, Belarus. They outscored their teammates, Anastasia Poluianova / Dmitry Sopot, by about four points to win the gold medal.^[4] After taking silver at their next JGP assignment, in Gdańsk, Poland, they qualified to the Junior Grand Prix Final. At the final, held in December in Nagoya, Japan, the pair placed third in the short program, with a fall by Pavliuchenko on the throw jump, and second in the free skate. They received the bronze medal, finishing third behind Australia's Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya / Harley Windsor and Russia's Apollinariia Panfilova / Dmitry Rylov.

Later that month, Pavliuchenko/Khodykin competed on the senior level, at the 2018 Russian Championships. Ranked sixth in both segments, they finished sixth overall behind Aleksandra Boikova / Dmitrii Kozlovskii. In January, they won the Russian junior title by a margin of more than eleven points.

In March, they won gold at the 2018 World Junior Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ranked first in both segments, they outscored the other medalists by more than twelve points. Together with Polina Kostiukovich / Dmitrii Ialin and Anastasia Mishina / Aleksandr Galiamov, they produced a Russian sweep of the pairs' podium.

With Pavliuchenko