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Yuma Kagiyama Takes Silver, Kaori Sakamoto Has to Settle for Third Place; Malinin and Glenn Win as US Figure Skaters Take 3 Gold Medals at Grand Prix Final
AP Photos/Laurent Cipriani Left: Silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama, of Japan, gold medalist Ilia Malinin, of the United States, and bronze medalist Shun Sato, of Japan, from left, pose on the podium of the men’s competition at the ISU Grand Prix Finals of Figure Skating, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, in Grenoble, France
Right: Silver medalist Mone Chiba, of Japan, gold medalist Amber Glenn, of the United States, and bronze medalist Kaori Sakamoto, of Japan, from left, pose after the women’s event at the ISU Grand Prix Finals of Figure Skating, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, in Grenoble, France
AP
10:50 JST, December 9, 2024
GRENOBLE, France (AP) — Ilia Malinin landed six quadruple jumps and Amber Glenn ended a 14-year wait for gold for the United States on an historic day for American figure skaters at the Grand Prix Final on Saturday.
Malinin and Glenn won their individual events and Madison Chock and Evan Bates retained their ice dance title as the U.S. won three of the four senior gold medals.
Malinin attempted seven quads in his program including the quad axel, which only he has ever landed in competition, with a backflip as an exclamation point near the end. Malinin fell once but landed the other six quads, though all of them picked up deductions on execution.
“A lot was going on in my mind. It was just so crazy,” Malinin said. “I had this idea and this goal that I wanted to achieve here and I was able to blow it out of the park.”
Malinin’s free skate score ended up slightly below that of second-placed Yuma Kagiyama, but his 12-point lead from Friday’s short program kept him comfortably ahead overall. Malinin’s 292.12 total points were enough to successfully retain the Grand Prix Final title.
Olympic silver medalist Kagiyama scored 281.78 for second place after landing three quads in the free skate, and fellow Japanese skater Shun Sato took bronze on 270.82.
Amber Glenn’s moment
Glenn became the first American to win the women’s Grand Prix Final since Alissa Czisny 14 years ago. Three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto had to settle for third place.
That caps an unbeaten breakout season for 25-year-old Glenn, who started the year with her first U.S. title in January. Glenn admitted it’s hard to get used to being on the top step of the podium.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “It has been a whirlwind of a season and I’ve kind of struggled with this imposter syndrome. Just, ‘Oh, no, no, I’m not winning. That’s not me.’ And I’m just happy my hard work is finally showing, and this is a great event, and I’m honored to even be here.”
Skating last in the six-woman field against five Japanese skaters, there was little sign of the pain which bothered Glenn in Thursday’s short program.
Glenn started with an emphatic triple axel and overcame a slight wobble partway through her free skate — doubling a planned triple salchow and slightly under-rotating a triple flip — to finish strongly and score a total of 212.07 for the win.
Mone Chiba, a silver medalist at both of her Grand Prix events this season, was second again on 208.85.
World champion Sakamoto had been out of form in the short program but recovered with a strong free skate to the musical “Chicago” for bronze on 201.13.
Skating to a jazz medley, Chock and Bates took the ice dance gold for the second year running with a 219.85 total to win by nearly 14 points from Italy’s Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri. Third place went to Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, a point further back.
Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin won the pairs event on Friday.
