Beda Leon Sieber (born 20 May 2004) is a Swiss ice dancer. With his skating partner, Gina Zehnder, he is the 2023 JGP Turkey bronze medalist, and a three-time Swiss junior national champion. Zehnder and Sieber are the first Swiss ice dance team, junior or senior, to win a medal at an ISU Grand Prix event.[1]
Sieber was born on 20 May 2004 in Kilchberg, Switzerland. As of 2023, he attends the United School of Sports in Zürich. Outside of figure skating, Sieber is passionate about sewing and fashion design.[2]
Sieber became interested in figure skating after attending an ice show with his family. He took up the sport himself in 2015 at a skating club in Thalwil, Switzerland. Sieber transitioned to his current skating club, Eislaufclub Küsnacht, where he trained as a novice single skater until 2019.[2] In January 2019, Sieber's coach Cornelia Leroy presented both him and his now partner, Gina Zehnder, with the opportunity to compete as a dance team at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, a home event for the Swiss teenagers, and together, they chose to switch disciplines with that goal in mind.[3]
2019–20 season: Debut of Zehnder and Sieber
Zehnder and Sieber made their junior international debut as an ice dance team at the 2019 Ice Star in October, where they finished twenty-third. They gained further competitive experience at two additional international events over the fall of 2019, the 2019 Pavel Roman Memorial and the 2019 Bosphorus Cup, where they placed sixteenth and nineteenth, respectively.[4]
In order to achieve their goal of receiving the ice dance host pick spot at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne, Zehnder and Sieber needed to be the top junior dance team at the 2020 Swiss Figure Skating Championships in December. Despite being newcomers to ice dance with less than a year of training together under their belts, Zehnder and Sieber won the national title by an over nine-point margin over silver medalists Alina Klein and Maxim Kobelt, and were named to the Swiss Youth Olympic team.[4]
At the Youth Olympics in January, then-14-year-old Zehnder had the honor of lighting the cauldron at the event's opening ceremony as the youngest athlete in the Swiss delegation.[5] During the ice dance competition, Zehnder and Sieber placed twelfth in both the rhythm dance and the free dance for a twelfth-place finish overall in the individual event. The duo were also included in the Mixed NOC Team Trophy, grouped into Team Motivation with Ukrainian and Italian single skaters Andrey Kokura and Alessia Tornaghi, and Russian pair team Diana Mukhametzianova and Ilya Mironov. Zehnder and Sieber placed eighth in the team ice dance event, and Team Motivation finished fifth of eight overall.[4]
Zehnder and Sieber concluded their debut season at the 2020 World Junior Championships where they placed twenty-ninth in the rhythm dance and did not advance to the final segment of competition.[4]
2021–22 season
Travel restrictions and health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Zehnder and Sieber from competing during the 2020–21 season. The team returned to international competition in September 2021 for their ISU Junior Grand Prix debut at the 2021 JGP Russia. In Krasnoyarsk, the team placed fifteenth in the rhythm dance and fourteenth in the free dance for fourteenth-place finish overall. They replicated this placement at their next event in October, the 2021 JGP Austria.[4] Zehnder and Sieber competed at one final event in the fall in the lead up to their national championships, the 2021 Autumn Talents Cup, where they claimed their first international medal, a silver behind Ukrainian team Myroslava Tkachenko and Andrii Kapran.[6]
In November, Zehnder and Sieber defended their junior national title at the 2021 Swiss Figure Skating Championships, winning gold again by an approximately nine-point margin, this time over compatriots Kayleigh Maksymec and Maxmilien Rahier. The team was initially named to the Swiss berth at the 2022 World Junior Championships, but were forced to withdraw after Zehnder sustained a knee injury. Zehnder and Sieber ultimately concluded their season at the 2022 Egna Dance Trophy, where they finished thirteenth.[4]
2022–23 season
Zehnder's knee injury continued to impact the team's ability to train throughout 2022.[1] They finally returned to the ice in September, opting to withdraw from their Junior Grand Prix assignments due to lack of preparation time. Zehnder and Sieber opened their competitive season at the 2022 Bosphorus Cup where they placed fourth.[4] The team's only other event during the season was the 2022 Swiss Figure Skating Championships where they placed second in the junior dance category behind Milla O'Brien and Laurin Wiederkehr.[7]
2023–24 season: Junior Grand Prix bronze
Fully recovered from injury, Zehnder and Sieber returned to the Junior Grand Prix circuit for their fourth competitive season as a team. At their first assignment, the 2023 JGP Turkey, the team placed fourth in the rhythm dance, but rose to first in the free dance, ultimately placing third overall. Their bronze medal marked the first medal for a Swiss ice dance team at any ISU Grand Prix event, junior or senior.[1]
At their second JGP assignment, the 2023 JGP Poland, Zehnder and Sieber finished in fourth place. They followed up this result by winning the 2023 Swiss Open on the junior level and taking bronze at the 2023 Pavel Roman Memorial on the junior level.[4]
In late November, Zehnder and Sieber debuted on the senior international level by winning silver at the 2023 Bosphorus Cup. They then went on to win the junior national title at the 2024 Swiss Championships.[4]
Following a silver medal win on the junior level at the 2024 Ephesus Cup, Zehnder and Sieber placed fourteenth at the 2024 World Junior Championships in Taipei, Taiwan.[4]
Selected to compete at the 2024 World Championships in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Zehnder and Sieber placed thirty-second in the rhythm dance and did not advance to the free dance segment of the competition.[4]
Going on to compete on the senior international level, Zehnder and Sieber won the bronze medal at the 2024 Pavel Roman Memorial and finishing fourth at the 2024 Bosphorus Cup. In December, the team won their first senior national title at the 2025 Swiss Championships. The following month, Zehnder and Sieber made their European Championship debut at the 2025 European Championships in Tallinn, Estonia. The team placed twenty-third in the rhythm dance and did not advance to the free dance segment of the competition.[4]
Speaking of their planned off-season work, Sieber said, "We will be changing some things. We changed the twizzles for next year. We’re also working on new lifts to find something as creative, or even more creative, and out of the box than last year."[8]
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