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World champion Malinin grabs men's lead at Skate Canada / Photo: © AFP
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World champion Malinin grabs men's lead at Skate Canada
Reigning world champion Ilia Malinin of the United States captured the men's short programme with a superb performance on Saturday at Skate Canada.
Malinin, who won a third consecutive Skate America title last week, took the short programme at Halifax, Nova Scotia, with 106.22 points from judges with Japan's Shun Sato second on 96.52 and Japan's Sota Yamamoto third on 92.16.
Malinin, a 19-year-old from suburban Washington, won last year's ISU Grand Prix Final at Shanghai and then took his first world men's crown at Montreal last March with a world-record free skate point total.
Sato, 20, is a former world junior champion whose world junior record score was broken by Malinin in 2022.
Canada's Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, the 2024 world ice dance runners-up seeking a fifth consecutive Skate Canada crown, grabbed the lead after the rhythm dance with 86.44 points.
Canadians Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha were second on 77.34 with France's Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud third on 76.76.
The women's and pairs free skate finals will be conducted later on Saturday.
Three-time reigning world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan grabbed the lead over American Alysa Liu after Friday's women's short programme.
Sakamoto, the defending Skate Canada champion, won the short programme with 74.97 points with 19-year-old Liu, in her first ISU Grand Prix event since 2021, second on 67.68.
Four-time Japanese champion Sakamoto, a 24-year-old from Kobe, took women's bronze and team silver at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Liu, who made a triumphant return from retirement two weeks ago in Budapest, was the first American woman to land a quadruple jump and won the 2019 and 2020 US national titles at ages 13 and 14.
She finished sixth at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and third at the 2022 world championships then retired. She ended a two-year layoff this past March.
Canada's reigning pairs world champions, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, launched their bid for a second Skate Canada title in a row by winning the short programme with 73.23 points.
Germany's Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel were second on 64.82, only 0.01 ahead of Australians Anastasia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore.
The six-event ISU Grand Prix series continues next month in France, Japan, Finland and Canada leading to the Grand Prix Final in December at Grenoble, France.
T. Jones--BTZ
