Amber Glenn triumphed over neck discomfort to outshine her world champion U.S. teammate Alysa Liu and secure the figure skating Cup of China for the second consecutive year on Saturday in Chongqing. The U.S. national champion, Glenn, held her neck post her free skate performance, where she bounced back from an unsteady triple toeloop landing early on. Initially in third place after the short program on Friday, Glenn had to await Liu and Japan’s Rinka Watanabe’s free skates to determine her final standing.
Liu slipped to second place with a total of 212.07 points compared to Glenn’s 214.78 after a shaky triple flip landing, while Watanabe barely held onto the podium, dropping to third following the fifth-best score in the free skate. Glenn expressed feeling “incredible” and expressed her excitement at both her and her teammate claiming the top two spots on the podium. Despite being a two-time world championship medalist, this marks Liu’s first podium finish in a Grand Prix event.
In the men’s event, Japan’s Shun Sato clinched the Cup of China title for the second consecutive year, executing three quadruple jumps flawlessly in his free skate, totaling 278.12 points and surpassing Italy’s Daniel Grassl at 269.43. Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov settled for third place with a score of 262.67 after a fall on his final jump.
In ice dance, world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates secured their first Cup of China victory on their sixth attempt, scoring a total of 208.25 to outperform their U.S. counterparts Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik with 202.27. The third spot went to Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud from France with a score of 196.60.
Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava claimed the pairs gold with a score of 217.24, followed by Italy’s Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii in second place and China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, the 2022 Olympic champions who recently returned from retirement, in third.
The Cup of China serves as the second out of six regular season Grand Prix events leading up to the final in December, crucial for skaters aiming for success at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in February. The ISU Grand Prix series will now move to Saskatoon for Skate Canada International starting on October 31.
