BEIJING: Canada's double Olympic medallist Patrick Chan came from third place to snatch Cup of China gold in Beijing Saturday and secure his place at next month's ISU Grand Prix Final.
First and second-placed women's skaters Elena Radionova of Russia and Kaetlyn Osmond of Canada, ice dancers Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani of the US and Chinese pairs skaters Xiaoyu Yu and Hao Zhang also made sure of their places at next month's ISU Grand Prix Final in Marseille with their performances at the China event.
Radionova smashed the 200 barrier with her Turandot medley containing seven triple jumps to win gold in ladies' free skating.
"I'm very happy to have come first today. My performance was not perfect, it was not my best skate, but it was the best of the season so far... It's hard for me to speak right now, I'm very overwhelmed," said an emotional Radionova after the event.
"I'm very happy to have come first today. My performance was not perfect, it was not my best skate, but it was the best of the season so far... It's hard for me to speak right now, I'm very overwhelmed," said an emotional Radionova after the event.
The story-telling of the choreographic sequence behind the jumps helped her earn 135.15 (205.90 combined), giving her a margin of almost 10 over Canadian Kaetlyn Osmond who took silver, slipping from Friday's lead.
"I did two mistakes. That was very uncharacteristic for me," Osmond said.
Elizaveta Tuktamysheva (127.69, 192.57) took bronze and caught the attention of the crowd with her triple loop/double toeloop/double loop sequence, with the 19-year-old Russian's closing change foot combination spin getting the biggest cheer of the night.
Chan, the Sochi Olympic silver medalist, won by a margin of just 1.38 over bombastic Jin Boyang, whose performance added 182.37 points to total a combined 278.54 for silver.
- Chan surprise -
"The programme felt very methodical, but I didn't give it more energy than it needed... Even with the fall with the quad I didn't panic," Chan said, adding he hadn't expected to win.
Russia's Sergei Voronov took bronze with 243.76.
World silver medal-winning brother and sister Maia and Alex Shibutani of the USA edged from second place for Friday's short programme to take ice dance gold with 111.90, bringing their combined score to 185.13.
Maia's leap into her brother's arms for the stationary lift was a crowd pleaser as was their finishing choreographic dance lift and twizzling movement.
Canada's Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje dropped to second, with 107.76 for their sumptuous performance to "Concerto de Aranjuez" earning the world championship runners-up another silver.
Russia's Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov broke the 100 barrier (101.70, 171.94) for their first time to take bronze for their tightly danced tango with the straight lift seeing Katsalapov plane across the rink on one knee.
In the Pairs, China's Xiaoyu Yu and Hao Zhang secured their place in the Grand Final despite Zhang tumbling into a somersault on the opening triple twist lift (131.27, 203.76).
"I feel happy we've won our first Grand Prix gold medal but I made a big mistake... I haven't fallen since the 2010 Olympics," Zhang said.
The remaining finalist places will be filled by skaters qualifying at the sixth and final leg of the Grand Prix series, the NHK Trophy in Sapporo from November 25-27.
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