Olympic champ Shaidorov 5th as Miura leads figure skating Cup of China

SHENZHEN, China (AP) — Olympic gold medalist Mikhail Shaidorov’s uneasy start to the new figure skating season continued Friday as an improved performance was only good enough for fifth place at the Cup of China.

Instead, it was another improving skater who took the lead as Kao Miura delivered a clean short program featuring two high-scoring quadruple jumps to score 102.90.

That was 30 more than the erratic short program that placed him ninth in the Grand Prix opener in France two weeks earlier, before he bounced back in the free skate for silver.

Miura’s Japanese teammate Shun Sato is second on 101.97, with Russian Evgeni Semenenko, competing as a neutral athlete, third on 99.72.

Shaidorov of Kazakhstan avoided the falls that troubled him in France last month, but stepped out on the landing of his opening quad lutz on his way to a score of 94.87.

Canada’s only representatives at the competition, pairs skaters Jazmine Desrochers and Kieran Thrasher, sit seventh after the short program in their senior Grand Prix debut.

CHIBA LEADS AND IGNATOVA RETURNS

World silver medalist Mone Chiba led the way in the women’s short program as Russian Alexandra Ignatova made a long-awaited return to the figure skating Grand Prix series.

Chiba took the lead on 76.08 points with her James Bond-themed program, despite an error on a double axel, in her first skate since the world championships in March following an offseason ankle injury.

It was just enough to keep Chiba ahead of Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia, who celebrated a personal-best 75.05 with a double fist pump as her score was announced.

Ignatova, skating as a neutral athlete, was third on 72.37 in her biggest international event since the 2022 Olympics. The 17-year-old Alexandra Trusova, who raged rinkside at her silver medal in 2022, is now 22, competing under her married name, and mother to a one-year-old son.

The International Skating Union has approved neutral athletes from Russia and Belarus to enter a wider range of events this season after they were only eligible to enter the Olympics and one Olympic qualifier last season.

BRITISH TEAM LEADS ICE DANCE

Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson lead the way in ice dance after scoring 80 points in the rhythm dance to beat Georgia’s Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin on 79.31. Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler of the Czech Republic are a distant third on 73.10.

Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, Russians competing as neutrals, have a big lead in pairs with 74.69. European champions Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava are second on 67.06 after dropping valuable points when a spin was ruled invalid. Karina Akopova and Nikita Rakhmanin are third for Armenia on 66.34.

World junior silver medallists Desrochers, of Mississauga, Ont., and Thrasher, of Windsor, Ont., scored 59.24 points in the pairs short program.

Desrochers, 20, and Thrasher, 22, finished eighth at a Challenger Series event in Massachusetts in September and seventh at an international competition in Scotland last month.

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The Associated Press