Japan’s Higuchi Wakaba won her first Grand Prix figure skating title at the 2024 Skate America on Saturday. The Olympian came back from a provisional fourth place after the short programme to edge out her compatriot Rinka Watanabe by 1.71 in the season opener in Texas.
wintersportsnews: Isabeau Levito of the United States finished third after taking the top spot in the rankings on Friday.
“I’m so happy, surprised,” Higuchi told NBC Sports, adding that her victory was “70% luck.”
Higuchi’s routine was flawed, with only two jump combinations rather than three and no triple-triple. However, she fully rotated all her jumps, while her rivals all had multiple under-rotations or popped jumps.
The 2022 Olympic team silver medallist who missed the 2022-23 season recovering from a stress fracture, climbed to the top with a total score of 196.93 points. While Higuchi’s win seems to indicate she’s fully recovered, she’s not quite ready to make any Olympic plans.
“I’m still trying to go through this season first,” Higuchi told Olympics.com. “If this competition had been the last of the season, I might have looked forward to the Olympics and so on. But this is just the first one in the season, I have a long way to go.”
Japan’s skaters seemed to be having quite a weekend, as former world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara claimed gold in pairs — a step up from their silver win last year and their fourth Grand Prix pairs victory. Americans took up the rest of the podium spots, with Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea finishing second and Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov third.
In the men’s short program, favourite Ilia Malinin won over Japan’s Kao Miura by a slim lead, with Georgia’s Nika Egadzerounding out the podium in third place.
“I felt really nervous before the event today,” the reigning world champion told NBC. “I think that might be the reason is just kind of all that pressure from the world championships, wanting to defend the title and kind of show who the world champion is, maybe made me a little more nervous.”
Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson grabbed a surprise lead over two-time reigning ice dance world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Fear and Gibson were fourth at the last two world championships but edged out the American pair after an unfortunate fall.
Skate America concludes on 20 October with the men’s short programme and ice dance finals.
