ALLEN, Texas — Will Isabeau Levitt become the youngest U.S. figure skater to win at Skate America since Michelle Kwan or will Brady Tennell become the oldest female single skater to win at Skate America? It was either.
Neither happened.
Instead, Japan’s Shinba Higuchi, perhaps the most successful active skater without a Grand Prix title, scored the biggest win of his career. She had finished second or third in five of her 13 Grand Prix appearances dating back to 2016.
Higuchi, who was fourth in the short program, overtook Americans Levit and Tennell, who were tied one-two after the short program. She scored a total of 196.93 points, 1.71 points ahead of her compatriot Rinka Watanabe.
Skate America: Broadcast Schedule | Results
Levit was third (2.1 points difference) and Tennell was fifth.
Higuchi had flaws — two jump combinations instead of three, no triple-triples — but she made every jump a full rotation, while all of the remaining top six He had multiple under-rotations and pop jumps.
“I’m very happy and surprised,” said Higuchi, 23, adding that the win was “70% luck.”
Ten years ago, at the age of 13, Higuchi placed third in his debut at Japan’s Senior All-Japan Championships. She finished second at the 2015 and 2016 All Japan Championships and missed out on the 2018 two-woman Olympic team by one spot.
She made a comeback and won a silver medal at the 2018 World Championships, held one month after the PyeongChang Olympics.
Higuchi will compete in the 2022 Olympics, finishing fifth in Beijing (triple axel) and moving up to fourth after Russia’s Kamila Valieva was disqualified for doping.
However, she missed most of the 2022-23 season due to a right shin injury and finished 12th at last season’s Japan Championships.
“I was really happy to be back last season, so I wasn’t sure in my head what kind of ranking or result I wanted,” Higuchi said through an interpreter. “My only goal was to complete both programs in each event.”
At 17, Levit was aiming to become the youngest American to win Skate America in any event since Kwan in 1997, but a late fall on a triple Lutz derailed his bid.
Levitt described the 2023-24 season as “up and down” as he finished third in defending his U.S. title and then won a silver medal at the world championships. Her Grand Prix debut in the 2024-25 season was similar.
“I’m proud of what I did,” she said on NBC Sports. “I had a little bit of a fluke today, but I’m fine. I’ll keep working. … I was excited to have done well with the program and rushed off for takeoff. The minute I got in there, I was like, oh, this is not good. I thought so. But it’s okay. Live and learn.”
Tennell, a two-time U.S. champion and 2018 Olympian, was the talk of Friday’s short program with his emotional return to Grand Prix after breaking his ankle last Halloween.
The 26-year-old said she was distracted during the free skate when the wrong cut of her music was played. She landed a triple Lutz that she had planned for in the second half of the program, and was sixth on the day.
“It’s a shame because I was skating a clean program every day at home,” she said.
Despite Saturday’s results, U.S. women’s singles skating appears to be at its best in years.
There’s Levit’s recent rise, Tennell’s recent return from injury, and two-time U.S. champion Alisa Liu coming out of retirement. Additionally, 2024 U.S. Champion Amber Glenn landed a triple axel in both programs for the first time in last month’s competition. Ellis Lynn-Gracie, who outperformed Levit in two events earlier this season, finished sixth at Skate America in her senior Grand Prix debut.
Only three women will be on the team for the world championships in Boston in March, and the team will be named after the U.S. championships in January.
Skate America is the first of six events in figure skating’s premier circuit, the Grand Prix Series.
The top six finishers in each discipline in the series (skaters compete in two of the six events) qualify for the Grand Prix Final in December, which is often a prelude to the worlds.
Earlier on Saturday, world champion Ilia Marin took first place in the men’s short program. He is trying to become the second man since 2000 to win three consecutive Skate America titles.
Marin, a 19-year-old from Virginia who goes by the nickname “Quad God,” landed a quadruple flip (minus execution) on Saturday night, followed by a triple axel and a quad Lutz-triple toe loop combination.
He scored 99.69 points, just 0.15 points behind Japan’s Yoshio Miura heading into Sunday’s free skate (live on NBC and Peacock).
“It was a pretty good start for the Grand Prix series,” Mullin, who also received a one-point time deduction, told NBC Sports. “Hey, I was really nervous before today’s event. I don’t know why, but at first I felt really nervous and a little stiff.
“Maybe the reason for that was like the pressure from the world championship, wanting to defend the title and wanting to show who the world champion is, so maybe I was a little nervous, but… Overall it was good. I am very satisfied through it all.”
Marinin could join 2022 Olympic champion Nathan Chen as the only male single skater to win three consecutive Skate America titles since 2000.
While Chen will step away from competition after the 2022 Olympics, Marinnin has established himself as a front-runner for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games.
At the world championships last March, Malin completed the most difficult series of jumps in history in a single free skate. The six quads, including the quad axel, were jumps that no one had ever successfully completed before.
This season, he added a backflip to his free skate, which he performed in his season debut last month. The International Skating Union legalized backflips during the offseason. This move has been banned since 1976, and points will be deducted if performed during competition.
In ice dancing, Brits Laila Fear and Lewis Gibson were surprise leaders in rhythm dancing after two-time world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates counted falls.
Fear and Gibson, who placed fourth at the past two world championships, scored 83.56 points, giving them a 5.68 point lead over Chock and Bates heading into Sunday’s free dance.
Last season, Chock and Bates outscored Fear and Gibson by 5.8 points and 6.43 points in two head-to-head free dances.
Early in the rhythm dance, Chock made a small jump in a choreographed sequence and landed on Bates’ feet instead of on the ice. She tripped and fell into the water, which she called a “weird fluke mistake” that had never happened before.
“Given that it happened quite early in the program, we feel like we were able to use our experience well to recover and move through the rest of the program very well,” Bates said. spoke.
Chock and Bates are undefeated entering 2023 and have won the past eight tournaments. They are aiming for a record-tying fifth Skate America ice dance title.
Chock and Bates won their first Grand Prix title of any kind together at Skate America in 2014, and went on to win the same event in 2015, 2022 and 2023.
Their closest rivals, Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, and Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, are scheduled to compete in various Grand Prix events over the next five weeks.
All three couples could potentially compete for the first time this season at the Grand Prix Final in December, and each must finish in the top six during the six-week Grand Prix regular season.
As for pairs, 2023 world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara became the first Japanese team to win at Skate America.
Miura and Kihara earned a total of 214.23 points for the two programs, 12.5 points ahead of national champions Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea.
Cam and O’Shea set the highest international score for an American pair since the start of last season. O’Shea cleared 200 points for the first time in his 13th season as a pair.
Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov took third place, marking the first time since 2006 that two Americans have finished on the podium at Skate America, an all-international event.
2024 Skate America Results
woman
1. Shinba Higuchi (JPN) — 196.93
2. Rinka Watanabe (JPN) — 195.22
3. Ysabeau Levit (USA) — 194.83
4. Nina Pinzarone (Belgium) — 193.61
5. Brady Tennell (USA) — 192.04
6. Ellis Lynn Gracie (USA) — 183.94
7. Yuna Aoki (JPN) — 183.03
8. Livia Kaiser (SUI) — 177.67
9. Olga Mikutina (AUT) — 166.77
10th Kim Min-chae (Korea) — 165.57
11. Lea Serna (France) — 151.87
12. Sofia Stechenko (LAT) — 137.92
men’s short program
1. Ilia Marin (USA) — 99.69
2. Yoshio Miura (JPN) — 99.54
3. Nika Egadze (GEO) — 93.89
4. Kevin Amos (France) — 92.04
5. Denis Vasilievs (LAT) — 85.10
6. Koshiro Shimada (JPN) — 81.88
7. Nozomi Yoshioka (JPN) — 80.79
8. Maxim Naumov (USA) — 83.11
9. Donovan Carrillo (Mexico) — 67.48
10th Wesley Chiu (Canada) — 66.86
11. Lucas Broussard (USA) — 65.31
12. Francois Pitot (FRA) — 56.16
rhythm dance
1. Lyla Fear/Lewis Gibson (GBR) — 83.56
2. Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA) — 77.88
3. Diana Davis/Gleb Smolkin (GEO) — 73.16
4. Alicia Fabbri/Paul Eyre (CAN) — 71.75
5. Olivia Smart/Tim Deke (ESP) — 70.99
6. Marie Jade Lauriot/Romain Le Gac (CAN) — 70.38
7. Katerina Mrazkova/Daniel Mrazek (CZE) — 70.09
8. Leah Neset/Artem Markelov (USA) — 69.68
9. Annabelle Morozov/Jeffrey Chen (USA) — 66.57
10. Elizabeth Tkachenko/Alexei Kiriakov (ISR) — 65.13
pair
1. Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) — 214.23
2. Ellie Kamm/Danny O’Shea (USA) — 201.73
3. Alisa Efimova/Misha Mitrofanov (USA) — 191.51
4. Anastasia Metelkina/Luca Berlava (GEO) — 191.43
5. Maria Pavlova/Alexei Svyachenko (HUN) — 184.01
6. Anastasia Vaipan Lo/Luke Digby (GBR) — 180.13
7. Katie McBeath/Danielle Parkman (USA) — 168.08
8. Milania Vernanen/Filippo Clerici (FIN) — 156.55
Ilya Marinin will perform a backflip at Skate America after figure skating officials legalized it for the first time in nearly 50 years.
