Latest news with #GrandPrixFinal
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Figure skating Grand Prix assignments: Alysa Liu, Chock/Bates headline Skate America
World champions Alysa Liu and Madison Chock and Evan Bates headline November's Skate America as figure skating's Grand Prix Series assignments for the Olympic season have been announced. The world's top skaters each compete twice over the six-event regular season in October and November, with the top six per discipline over the series qualifying for December's Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan. Advertisement The Final will be the last gathering of the world's top skaters before the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. Liu and Chock and Bates will be joined by at Skate America in Lake Placid, New York, by two-time U.S. Olympian Jason Brown. GRAND PRIX ASSIGNMENTS: Women | Men | Pairs | Ice Dance This season, Skate America is the fifth of six Grand Prix stops from Nov. 14-16. The Grand Prix season starts in France from Oct. 17-19, then moves to China, Canada and Japan before Skate America. After Skate America, the last regular season Grand Prix is in Finland. Two-time world champion Ilia Malinin is entered in the first and third Grand Prix events in France and Canada. Adeliia Petrosian ISU names figure skaters from Russia eligible for Olympic qualifying as neutral athletes Adelia Petrosian has been cleared to compete in Olympic figure skating qualifying and is a gold-medal contender.
NBC Sports
06-06-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Figure skating Grand Prix assignments: Alysa Liu, Chock/Bates headline Skate America
World champions Alysa Liu and Madison Chock and Evan Bates headline November's Skate America as figure skating's Grand Prix Series assignments for the Olympic season have been announced. The world's top skaters each compete twice over the six-event regular season in October and November, with the top six per discipline over the series qualifying for December's Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan. The Final will be the last gathering of the world's top skaters before the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. Liu and Chock and Bates will be joined by at Skate America in Lake Placid, New York, by two-time U.S. Olympian Jason Brown. This season, Skate America is the fifth of six Grand Prix stops from Nov. 14-16. The Grand Prix season starts in France from Oct. 17-19, then moves to China, Canada and Japan before Skate America. After Skate America, the last regular season Grand Prix is in Finland. Two-time world champion Ilia Malinin is entered in the first and third Grand Prix events in France and Canada. Nick Zaccardi,
NBC Sports
27-03-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Ilia Malinin looks invincible to his top rival at figure skating worlds
BOSTON — Yuma Kagiyama was smiling when he said it, as if he were trying to lighten the meaning of his words and the implication they carried about the weight of the challenge for any figure skater trying to compete with Ilia Malinin. After Thursday's short program at the World Championships, when he finished a close second to reigning world champion Ilia Malinin, Kagiyama was asked what impresses him most about the man known as Quadg0d. 'He does all those difficult jumps, and he makes them look effortless,' Japan's Kagiyama said through a translator. 'Maybe he is putting (out) effort, but to us, it looks effortless and really easy. 'And it's not just his jumps. I feel like his skating and his artistry, his expression is getting better year by year, so I'm starting to think he's invincible.' FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Results | Broadcast Schedule Invincible. There may have been a bit of jest in that word choice, but the serious truth is Malinin's unprecedented array of quadruple jumps alone is enough to make him nearly unbeatable, especially if he leads going into the free skate. And that assessment of Malinin comes from a guy who won silver medals at the 2022 Olympics and three world championships, a guy whose edge work, posture and finesse have given Kagiyama a nonpareil elegance on the ice. Yet it is easy to understand why Kagiyama feels that way. Even when Malinin makes mistakes on several jumps, as he did in this season's Grand Prix Final, he lost the free skate but not the title to Kagiyama. 'I had some goals coming into this competition, and of course, scores are important,' Kagiyama said. 'I wanted to just get my short and my free clean. So my top priority is not the scores, not the ranking. I just wanted to put everything I have out there.' Kagiyama is halfway there, having done a flawless short program in which his exquisite balance on knife-edge blades saved a potential disaster on a quadruple jump. Malinin was also flawless and so electric that a roaring TD Garden crowd stood to applaud early in his final element, a step sequence. The result was a new international personal best score of 110.41, topping his old mark by 3.16 and giving him a lead of 3.32 over Kagiyama going into Saturday's free skate (8 p.m. ET, NBC and Peacock). Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan was a distant third, nearly 16 points behind Malinin. 'I was not expecting them to cheer me on halfway through my step sequence, but it was definitely uplifting experience,' Malinin said. His quads — a quad flip and a quad Lutz in combination with a triple toe loop — were impressive as always. His trademark raspberry twist was stunning for the way he never stopped moving after landing it. But this was as complete a performance as Malinin has given, capped by his freezing without a wobble into an architectural final pose. 'I think it was definitely one of the best performances I've done,' Malinin said. He felt more nervous than usual before beginning the 2-minute, 50-second program to music by the rapper NF. He didn't understand why the nerves kicked in but took a few seconds to step outside himself and think, 'OK, that's interesting.' 'Once the music started playing, and I got into my starting position, and I almost fell into that, you know, flow state, and it really just took me from there,' he said. Malinin has been to places no one else in the sport has reached. He is the first to land a quadruple Axel, the first to try all six types of quad in a free skate, the first to try a total of seven quads in a free skate. 'What is most remarkable to me is I feel he has more in him,' said U.S. teammate Jason Brown. 'I have no idea what it feels like to do what he does, but it just looks so effortless. And so I feel like sky's the limit.' Brown struggled in his short program, his first competition since early November, when he stopped to solve persistent issues with his boots. He made costly mistakes on two jumps and wound up 12th with 84.72 points. The third U.S. man, Andrew Torgashev, made one misstep and was eighth at 87.27. This time, it looks as if Torgashev rather than Brown will bear the onus of helping the U.S. get three men's singles spots at the 2026 Winter Games, for which the placement of the top two finishers must add up to 13 or less. 'Any time you have three guys on the team, you all want to carry your weight,' Brown said. 'We're always relying on each other.' Malinin is likely to finish no lower than second, which would give Torgashev some wiggle room. 'People might expect a lot from me, and they expect me to come and win every single competition, to be really confident,' Malinin said. 'I think that sometimes I am still human. There are off days.' Sometimes. Philip Hersh is a special contributor to He has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics. Philip Hersh,
NBC Sports
27-03-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
At figure skating worlds, a U.S.-Canada ice dance story adds a chapter
The two couples have both been in the same ice dance universe for 14 seasons, with each moving at a different trajectory and speed toward the shiny medals that once seemed distant. One team, Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States, got there faster and collected more medals of all colors and more of the most glittering. Yet as they and rivals Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada home in on the biggest and brightest medal of all, an Olympic gold, the gap between the two couples has narrowed to the point that who stands on the top step of the podium at the 2026 Winter Games is almost impossible to predict. Even the results of the 2025 World Championships that began Wednesday in Boston likely will not be enough to make one couple the decisive favorite next year in Milan, Italy. (And, yes, it would be foolish to write off completely the title chances of Italian couple Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, fellow travelers in that senior ice dance universe for 15 years. The Italians finished third and second in the past two world meets. And there will apparently be at least one Russian team, so…) But the focus in Boston — and going forward into the Olympic season — will be on the two North American teams. At last year's World Championships, the U.S. took gold by 2.52 points over the Canadians - the smallest ice dance winning margin at worlds in 10 years. At February's Four Continents Championships, the Canadians took gold by .53 over the Americans, the smallest ice dance winning margin in the 21 seasons the event has used the current judging and scoring system. In both events, the winning team lost the free dance to the runner-up. At the 2024 Worlds, Chock and Bates won a second straight title despite a Montreal Bell Centre crowd pulling loudly for the Canadians. 'So many moments in sport, it's not black and white, there's so much nuance,' Poirier said. 'There's a part of you that's like, 'Oh, darn, we were really close, and it would have been nice to win.' There's the other part that's like, 'We just were able to have that skate in front of a home crowd in a really huge rink with so many of our friends and family there. There's kind of a bittersweetness to all of it.' Although figure skaters never are really competing directly head-to-head, they are competing for a higher final standing. Chock and Bates have finished higher than Gilles and Poirier in 25 of their 30 meetings, according to Yet the Canadians have won two of the last six, beginning with the 2022 Grand Prix Final in Torino, Italy. That Grand Prix Final came just before Gilles was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer, which led to surgery removing an ovary and her appendix. Barely three months later, she and Poirier had the most impressive medal of their career: a bronze at the 2023 World Championships. 'It felt like the bronze was our gold because of everything we had been through that year,' Gilles said. 'We had hit a peak moment (in Torino). We had never been this successful. And all of a sudden, I have to have surgery and experience this unknown cancer beast. Now I feel I am totally back to where we were in Torino.' That brings us to the next meeting of Gilles-Poirier and Chock-Bates, also at a huge rink, TD Garden. The rhythm dance is Friday, the free dance Saturday. 'I think what's really nice (about the rivalry) is the two of us are extremely distinct in our own styles,' Chock said. 'What I admire about them is they have always had their own voice, and they never strayed from that. Nick Zaccardi, 'Both times they've done tango programs, it's been a very different take on a tango than the typical one you would see. It just works, and it's really refreshing to see a different style.' Gilles and Poirier always have been envelope pushers, whether in costumes or interpretations of music. 'What I admire most about them is that they have stuck to their guns,' Bates said. 'They have not deviated from their uniqueness. They've kind of leaned into it.' In one of their four costume options for this season's rhythm dance, Gilles and Poirier are dressed in red-and-white lifeguard costumes (also a nod to Canada's colors) as they skate the Beach Boys and the Surfaris. Their costumes for a Beatles medley rhythm dance in 2016 echoed characters from the iconic Sgt. Pepper album cover, she in hot pink, he in royal blue, with the appropriately bright military uniform braiding. And then there were the blindingly orange, bejeweled jumpsuits they wore in the 2022 Olympic rhythm dance, right in step with Elton John and his music. 'We always have a lot of fun with costumes,' said Carol Lane, their primary coach. Chock has designed many of her own competitive costumes, which are striking but not startling like many of those used by Poirier and Gilles. 'I don't think we've ever had a conversation like, 'What's going to make us stand out?''' Poirier said. 'In our minds, trying different things every year allowed us to find our niche. 'I think a lot of our work starts from a question. And that question is usually, 'Is this possible?' I think what has made us so unique over time is people don't know what we are going to do next.'' They feel the same way watching Chock and Bates unveil each season a more complex lift or a more intricately complex link between elements. In this year's free dance, Bates slings Chock around his waist and chest for some dozen rotations; pulls her quickly across the ice in a transitional move that looks like the beginning of a pairs' death spiral; carries her upside down; and finishes by hooking her left skate over his left leg for a whirlybird spin that starts just above the ice and ends at his waist level. 'They're very innovative with their tricks and how they integrate some of their skating and transitions,' Gilles said. 'Seeing them kind of have a very similar path to ours and succeed has been wonderful to watch. It's been nice for them to continue to push the sport, just like we've been trying to do the past few years.' SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 20: Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships at Mokdong Ice Rink on February 20, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun - International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images) Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier have won three World Championships medals, but seek their first gold this week. (International Skating Union via Getty Images) More and more, ice dancers looking for an Olympic medal in their discipline have learned to play the long game. If, as expected, one of the three teams that have swept the medals at the last two world championships goes on to win the 2026 Olympic gold medal, both members of the couple would be the oldest Olympic ice dance champions in history, according to the OlyMADMen. If Guignard and Fabbri, now 35 and 37, respectively, win a medal, each would be older than any ice dancer who has been on an Olympic medal podium, a distinction now belonging to British skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, 36 and 35, respectively, when they won bronze in 1994. Three of the four skaters on the other two medal contenders — Chock, Gilles and Poirier, now 32, 33 and 33 –- would be older than everyone in the past but Torvill and Dean. Bates, now 36, would be older than all previous medalists. No Olympic singles medalist since World War II has been older than 27. Five pairs medalists have been 33 or older. 'I think ice dance is a sport that allows for some longevity,' Chock said. 'It is certainly hard on the body in some ways, but the impact on our bodies is a lot less than if we were jumping or being thrown.' During the years when Gilles-Poirier and Chock-Bates began their partnerships and worked their way up toward the top (or, in the case of the U.S. couple, worked their way back up after early medal success at worlds), three couples dominated the world scene: first Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, the 2010 and 2018 Olympic champions; concurrently, Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S., the 2014 Olympic champions, then Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, the 2022 Olympic champions. From 2010 through 2022, those three teams combined to win all 10 world titles in which at least one couple competed and accounted for seven of the eight Olympic gold and silver medals. 'We grew up in an ice dance era with so many incredible athletes,' Gilles said. 'I think it was a good thing for us, because we continually had motivation to come in and try to beat them. 'When they retired, our (skill) level had improved because we had to compete against the best. And I think there's such a dominance (now) with Madison and Evan and us and the Italians because we really stood our ground during such a hard period of ice dance. It shows our strength to continue in the sport at a higher age than the average.' When a figure skating team struggles, the temptation is to change coaches. Neither the Canadians nor the Italians did switch, while Chock and Bates made such a move after a disappointing ninth at the 2018 Olympics, a striking drop after having won world medals in 2015 and 2016. Chock and Bates left their longtime training base in suburban Detroit to train at the Ice Academy of Montreal ( which was attracting ice dancers from around the world as it quickly became the discipline's 800-pound gorilla. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 20: Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships at Mokdong Ice Rink on February 20, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by) Madison Chock and Evan Bates are trying to become the first ice dancers to win three consecutive world titles in 28 years. (Getty Images) In the nine world meets beginning with 2015, skaters have won eight titles and eight other medals. At the upcoming worlds, one-third of the 36 entries will be skaters — 10 from the training center in Montreal and two from the affiliate in London, Ontario. They will represent 10 different countries. Even though their results stagnated from 2015 through 2018, Gilles and Poirier stayed with what they call a 'boutique' coaching and support team, Ice Dance Elite, founded and directed by Lane in the Scarborough district of Toronto. 'We never thought about moving,' Poirier said. 'As much as we were stuck in the standings, we felt we were improving.' Gilles and Poirier will be one of Ice Dance Elite's two teams at worlds. The other is native Canadians Carolane Soucisse and her husband, Shane Firus, now skating for Ireland after having represented Canada until 2022. 'It's kind of fun (being the outsiders),' Gilles said. 'It can be hard at times, because you can look and be like, 'Well, they have all the top athletes there.' And it's like they make our coaches seem like they're less qualified, which is absolutely the opposite. 'The downside of having a bigger group like ( is that the time you get with your coaches is less. We get so much attention, and so do our other teammates, and we thrive in that energy. We take pride in being small but mighty.' Chock and Bates understand that point of view, even while feeling they get all the needed attention at co-founded by their coaches, Marie-France Dubreuil, her husband, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Haguenauer. As ice dance partners, Dubreuil and Lauzon won two world silver medals. 'They (Gilles and Poirier) are the top team of their school, so maybe they're getting more attention from their coaches and their team,' Bates opined. 'That said, our coaches give us plenty of attention.' As was the case for Gilles and Poirier last year, Chock and Bates will relish the attention from skating in front of a home crowd, especially in Boston, long a figure skating mecca. It is where they made their first of three U.S. Olympic teams (2014) and won their second of five world medals. 'When you skate well on home soil, and you really get that big ovation, I do think like judges are human beings,' Bates said. 'It's hard not to feel that energy in the stadium and to not to have it color a little bit your impression of how great a skate it was.' Bates did not expect political tensions between the U.S. and Canada that have colored meetings of teams from the two countries in other sports this winter will carry over to the more genteel atmosphere of figure skating competitions, where the judging usually is the only thing booed. Yet… 'I'll just share a short story,' Bates said, a twinkle in his eyes during our recent Zoom interview as he related an incident at a Montreal coffee shop. 'I ordered an Americano today. It was delivered as a Canadien.' Philip Hersh is a special contributor to He has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics. Philip Hersh,
Associated Press
25-03-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Olympic favorite Ilia Malinin of the US aims to defend his figure skating world title
BOSTON (AP) — Ilia Malinin was standing in the baggage claim area of Boston Logan International Airport when a young man politely came up beside him. He pulled out an envelope filled with dozens of 8x10 photographs of the world champion figure skater, and Malinin dutifully took a silver Sharpie and began signing. It's a wonder his wrist didn't hurt by the end. Other travelers waiting for their luggage paid little attention to Malinin, the 20-year-old American wunderkind who had arrived in town to defend his title this week. But should he win another — and an especially poignant one, just months after a plane crash in Washington, D.C., killed several members of his skating club — it is going to become much more difficult to go incognito. 'I have a few mixed feelings about that one,' said Malinin, the overwhelming favorite not just this week but for the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics. 'Of course, I do feel pressure, since I'm one of the bigger names in skating. I have a bigger audience and a lot of people are looking to watch what I'm doing, and the things I'm doing on the ice.' The things Malinin is doing often have never before been done. He remains the only skater to land in competition the quad axel, the hardest jump in the sport, a 4 1/2-revolution tilt-a-whirl that is dizzying just to watch. And this week, Malinin just may try to land a record seven quads in a single free skate. 'That would be my ideal goal, to go for all those,' said Malinin, who has come close to pulling it off in competition, only to make a misstep somewhere in the program. 'I'll have to evaluate how I feel during practices and potentially during the warmup.' Malinin's jumping prowess — and the resulting base scores for his programs — gives him a massive advantage over the field. But should the two-time defending Grand Prix Final champion from Fairfax, Virginia, stumble through his short program Thursday or his free skate Saturday, there are plenty of contenders eager to dethrone him. Topping the list are Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato of Japan. Kagiyama is the reigning Olympic silver medalist and current Japanese champion, while Sato finished third behind Malinin at the prestigious Grand Prix Final in December. Then there's Mikhail Shaidorov, who has been nearly as innovative as Malinin lately. The 20-year-old from Kazakhstan is the first to land the triple axel-quad toe loop combination and a sequence involving the triple axel and quad salchow. Women's competition The world championships begin Wednesday with the women's short program, where Kaori Sakamoto of Japan will try to become the first to win four consecutive titles since American Carol Heiss won five in a row in the 1950s and '60s. Sakamoto might not be the favorite, though. That is arguably Amber Glenn, the 25-year-old triple-axel queen from Texas, who has not been beaten in any competition this season. That includes triumphs at the Cup of China, Grand Prix de France and Grand Prix Final, along with her second consecutive U.S. championship, which she narrowly won over Alysa Liu. The last American to win a world title was Kimmie Meissner in 2006. Ice dance Madison Chock and Evan Bates will begin their pursuit of a third consecutive world title with Friday's rhythm dance, which this season is required to feature high-energy social dances and styles from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. The Americans won their second straight Grand Prix Final in December, but they were beaten by Canadian rivals Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier — the reigning world silver medalists — at the recent Four Continents competition in South Korea. Chock and Bates are targeting the Olympics next year, and worlds is an important step in the lead-up to the Games. 'We know competing at a home worlds on home soil, being Americans, is a really special feeling,' said Chock, who along with Bates took bronze at the 2016 worlds in Boston. 'It's really exciting and really warm for the U.S. skaters in particular.' Pairs event Deanna Stellato-Dudek, an American-born skater who recently became a Canadian citizen, and Maxime Deschamps will try to defend their first world championship beginning with the pairs short program Wednesday. Their biggest rivals are Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who beat the Canadiens last month at Four Continents. The Japanese were the world champions two years ago before finishing second to Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps last season. Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany could upset both of those pairs. They're the two-time and reigning Grand Prix Final champions and hold the season's best score, set at the lower-level Nebelhorn Trophy last September. 'What we really want,' Deschamps said, 'is to go out and be proud of what we're doing, and that'll put us where we need to be.' ___
