ANGERS, France — American figure skater Amber Glenn secured her first-ever Figure Skating Grand Prix title in Angers after taking a big lead in the short programme at the French round of the series.
Despite facing challenges during her free skate, including a fall and doubts, Glenn’s strong performance in the short program and the unwavering support of the audience propelled her to victory with a total score of 210.44 points.
Glenn was the only skater in the women’s event to land a triple axel on her way to 78.14 points, taking the lead by more than seven points from South Korea’s Kim Chaeyeon on 70.90.
Wakaba Higuchi of Japan, the winner at Skate America last month, is in third on 66.98, AP reported. The former European champion Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia was down in ninth place after a fall.
Jin Boyang led the men’s short programme in search of his first Grand Prix win since his home Cup of China in 2020. Jin landed a quadruple as he scored 88.12, with Estonia’s Aleksandr Selevko on 85.73 and Kazuki Tomono of Japan on 83.45.
There was a spate of falls among top contenders, with two-time European champion and home favorite Adam Siao Him Fa of France only eighth on 74.90 after falling on his last two jumps.
Last season’s world championship bronze medalists Minerva Fabienna Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany led the pairs on 73.72, ahead of Italy’s Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii and Canada’s Lia Pereira and Trent Michaud.
In the ice dance, two-time European champions Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri of Italy led on 82.20, with France’s Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud second and Lithuania’s Allison Reed and Saulius Ambrulevicius third.
Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, meanwhile, plans to resume her competitive career after she serves out the four-year ban imposed for failing a drugs test.
Valieva, now 18, told Russian news agencies that she wants to compete again as she will still be young enough to do so when her ban ends at the end of 2025.
“Of course, I am thinking about this. It is not the end. My last appearance at the Russian championship was not my best. And it is probably stupid to abandon a sports career at my age,” she was quoted as saying.
Valieva said she was “gradually coming into form”.
“I am trying at first to gain confidence about the elements I had last season — a triple toe loop and double Axel. With greater confidence,
“I will bring in more difficult content as I won’t be in competition for more or less a year and a half,” she added according to Reuters.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) imposed a four-year ban on Valieva earlier this year, with the penalty backdated to when she tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, which prevents angina attacks, at the Russian national championships in December 2021.
That punishment meant the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) was stripped of the gold medal in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games nearly two years after the competition.
Valieva’s team has said the positive test could have been due to a mix-up with her grandfather’s heart medication. The Kremlin dismissed the ruling as politically motivated.
