Wakaba Higuchi won the women’s title at Skate America on Saturday, leading Rinka Watanabe in a Japanese one-two in the first figure skating grand prix event of the season.
American Isabeau Levito, leading after the short programme, had some errors, including a fall on a triple Lutz, and slipped to third, Higuchi climbing from fourth after the short programme.
Higuchi, a 2022 Olympic team silver medallist who missed the 2022-23 season recovering from a stress fracture, led the free skate to climb to the top with a total score of 196.93 points.
She delivered an elegant, technically crisp routine to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” to claim the first grand prix title of her career.
Watanabe was third in both the short programme and free skate but her total of 195.22 was enough for silver as world silver medallist Levito struggled with some of her jumps to finish third on 194.83.
It was a big day for Japanese skaters as former world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara claimed pairs gold.
The duo, who earned silver at the last worlds after winning gold in 2023, delivered a polished albeit not perfect free skate to post a total of 214.23 points.
They had led by more than seven points after the short programme and had the best score in the free skate despite Miura falling on their triple throw loop.
Americans Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finished second on 201.73 points and compatriots Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov were third on 191.51.
Meanwhile, world champion Ilia Malinin shook off early season nerves to score 99.69 points in the short programme, just 15-hundredths of a point ahead of Japan’s Kao Miura, who was in second on 99.54.
Nika Egadze of Georgia was in third with 99.89 points.
“I felt really nervous before the event today,” Malinin told broadcaster NBC. “I don’t know why that was, but I just felt really tense and kind of a little stiff in the beginning.”
Malinin’s opening quadruple flip was slightly wobbly, but he gained confidence in a routine that included a triple Axel and a quadruple Lutz in combination.
– Pressure to defend –
Malinin soared to his first world title with a gravity-defying quadruple-jumping free skate in Montreal last season that put him more than 20 points ahead of his rivals.
The 19-year-old said his nerves might come from launching into a season as reigning world champion for the first time.
“I think that might be the reason is just kind of all that pressure from the world championships, wanting to defend the title and kind of show who the world champion is, maybe made me a little more nervous,” he said.
Miura had laid down a challenging marker with a strong performance and said he felt “very relaxed” during a routine that included a quadruple Salchow-triple toe combination.
There was a surprise in the ice dancing rhythm dance as Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson grabbed the lead over two-time reigning ice dance world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
Fear and Gibson, fourth at the last two world championships, scored 83.56 points for a 5.68-point lead over Chock and Bates — whose performance was marred by an uncharacteristic fall after Chock hit Bates’s foot upon landing a small jump.
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