Higuchi Wins Women’s Gold, Miura And Kihara Capture Pairs in Big Night for Japan at Skate America

AP

13:02 JST, October 20, 2024

Wakaba Higuchi won her first Grand Prix event after more than eight years of trying Saturday night, putting together an error-free program at Skate America to edge Japanese teammate Rinka Watanabe and American star Isabeau Levito.

Higuchi finished with 196.93 points at Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas, while Watanabe took the silver medal with 195.22 points. Levito made a significant mistake, falling on her triple lutz, and was third with 194.83 points.

“I got excited with how well I was getting through the program and I rushed the jump,” said Levito, who was the leader after the short program, “and immediately while I was in the air I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not a good thing to do.'”

In the pairs event, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara began the medal haul for Japan by following a dazzling short program with a winning free skate. They scored 214.33 points to outdistance Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, the reigning U.S. champions, who took the silver medal with 201.73 points. American teammates Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov were third.

“It’s great to be back,” Kihara said. “It’s been a while since we won a competition so we are happy about that as well.”

Higuchi was fourth after her short program, but the 23-year-old from Tokyo was poised and precise in her free skate. And while Watanabe nearly matched her moments later, her level-3 spins and under-rotated jumps left Higuchi clinging to the lead.

Bradie Tennell, who was second to Levito after the short program, also made a bid for the top step of the podium in her return from a broken ankle. But after getting cleanly through her first five jumping passes, the 26-year-old American was forced into a single lutz rather than a planned triple, and the mistake cost her a shot at her first Grand Prix medal in four years.

Tennell finished fourth with 192.04 points, hurting her chances of qualifying for the Grand Prix Final.

Levito was the last to take the ice, and she made an opening triple lutz-triple toe loop look easy. She added a triple flip-half loop-triple salchow later in the program, and was soaring toward gold after finishing second at Skate America a year ago.

Then came her fall on her triple lutz, and the deduction that proved to be the difference between first place and third.

“I’m proud of myself for what I did do,” Levito said.

In the men’s event, which began with Saturday’s short program, world champion Ilia Malinin of the U.S. took another step on his path toward the 2026 Winter Olympics by opening the slimmest of leads over Japanese rival Kao Miura.

The 19-year-old Malinin took a step on his opening quad flip in a program set to “Running” by the rapper NF, but he landed his triple axel and a quad lutz-triple toe loop to score 99.59 points. That was 0.15 points ahead of Miura, who landed a sublime quad salchow-triple toe loop along with a triple axel and quad toe loop in his program.

Nika Egadze of Georgia was third with 93.89 points heading into Sunday’s free skate.

The ice dance competition also began with the rhythm dance, and a mistake by two-time defending world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates left the Americans trailing Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson heading into Sunday.

“We went for a jump in the choreo sequence,” Chock said, “and instead of landing on the ice, I landed on Evan’s foot. It’s just a fluke accident, but at a very costly spot in the program. It’s what makes the sport interesting. It’s unpredictable.”

Fear and Gibson, who won the lower-level Nebelhorn Trophy earlier this year, scored 83.56 points. Chock and Bates had 77.88 points while Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin of Georgia were third with 73.16 points.

“We wanted to go out there and just kind of improve on what we had done in our previous two competitions, and I think we did that,” Gibson said. “We also had a lot of fun and the crowd were very engaged.”