Higuchi wins Women’s Gold, Miura and Kihara Capture Pairs at Big Night for Japan at Skate America

Wakaba Higuchi won her first Grand Prix event after more than eight years of trying on Saturday night, putting together a flawless program at Skate America to beat 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 big mistake, fell on her triple lutz and came third with 194.83 points.

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

In the pairs event, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara started Japan’s medal winning streak by completing a dazzling short program with a winning free skate. They scored 214.33 points, surpassing Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, the reigning American champions, who took the silver medal with 201.73 points. American teammates Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov finished third.

“It’s great to be back,” Kihara said. “It’s been a while since we won a match, so we’re happy with that too.”

Higuchi finished 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 kept Higuchi in the lead.

Bradie Tennell, who finished second after Levito after the short program, also made a bid for the top step of the podium on her return after a broken ankle. But after clearing her first five jumping passes, the 26-year-old American was forced into a single lutz instead of 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, which hurt 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 soared toward gold after finishing second at Skate America a year ago.

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

“I’m proud of myself for what I’ve done,” Levito said.

In the men’s event, which started with Saturday’s short program, American world champion Ilia Malinin took another step towards the 2026 Winter Olympics by taking the narrowest lead 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 rapper NF, but he landed with his triple axel and a quad lutz-triple toe loop, scoring 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 placed third with 93.89 points heading into Sunday’s free skate.

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

“We did 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, but in a very precious spot in the program. That 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 finished 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 audience was very involved.”