NHK Trophy preview, broadcast times

By Nick ZaccardiNov 7, 2013, 11:42 AM EST

Four weeks into the Grand Prix season, fans will see the strongest field yet at the NHK Trophy in Tokyo on Friday and Saturday.

The lineups are impressive from American and international perspectives with reigning ice dance World champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White making their second Grand Prix appearance after winning Skate America and the season debut of Javier Fernandez, the reigning World bronze medalist.

Here’s the broadcast schedule:

Universal Sports online broadcast schedule
Friday — 12:50 a.m. (pairs/men’s/women’s short programs)
Friday — 10:05 p.m. (short dance/pairs free)
Saturday — 10 p.m. (free dance)

NBC broadcast schedule
Sunday — 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Here are event-by-event preview:

Men
While Fernandez will be one to watch, so will almost the entire men’s field, which includes 2010 Olympic bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi.

Takahashi stumbled in his Grand Prix opener last month, finishing fourth at Skate America. Americans Adam Rippon and Max Aaron beat Takahashi in Detroit, Rippon registering a personal best on his way to silver while Aaron was third.

It will be an excellent weekend for the Americans — Rippon and Aaron are joined by three-time U.S. champion Jeremy Abbott – to measure themselves against Fernandez and Takahashi, as well as Japan’s Takahito Mura and Nobunari Oda, the latter who won bronze at Skate Canada two weeks ago.

Abbott, specifically, will look for a strong showing after finishing a disappointing sixth at Skate Canada. He was ninth at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Women
Japan has a strong contingent among the ladies as well, most notably Mao Asada, the 2010 Olympic silver medalist and two-time world champion. Asada will look to build on her Skate America win with her triple Axel and strong spins. Countrywoman Akiko Suzuki, 28, was second a week later at Skate Canada.

Gracie Gold, 18, who won silver at the U.S. Championships in January, took bronze at Skate Canada and will have two more weeks under her belt with veteran coach Frank Carroll, whom she began working with in September. Gold is joined by Mirai Nagasu, the 2008 U.S. champion who was fourth at the Vancouver Games.

Russia’s Alena Leonova is making her Grand Prix season debut, though the 2012 World silver medalist was a disappointing 13th at the same competition this year. More eyes might be on Yelena Radyonova, 14, who was third at Skate America but is ineligible for the Olympics because of age restrictions.

Ice Dance
Davis and White look not only to win gold in Tokyo, but also to capture their 14th straight Grand Prix title, a streak dating to 2009 and includes Skate America in October.

It’s that event that gives the World champions confidence. They scored 188.23 in Detroit, seven points higher than Canadian rivals Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir at Skate Canada the following week.

Italy’s Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte, second at Skate America, will push Davis and White at NHK.

American siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani were third at Skate America, where they debuted their Michael Jackson medley free dance, Alex falling on a transitional passage. Russians Yelena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov are another couple to watch, having placed fifth at the 2012 World Championships.

Pairs
Russia’s best bet for an Olympic gold medal in figure skating is in pairs, where Tatyana Volosozhar and Maksim Trankov are the reigning World champions. Volosozhar and Trankov broke their own world records at Skate America and shouldn’t run into too much trouble to win again in Tokyo.

U.S. champions Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir hope to improve from sixth in Detroit.

Wow! NHK skaters will be sitting on a giant octopus! From @cjlanecoach pic.twitter.com/axanr7RX6X

— Sarah and Drew (@SarahandDrew) November 7, 2013

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Jessica Pegula upset in French Open third round

By OlympicTalkJun 2, 2023, 7:22 AM EDT

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Jessica Pegula, the highest-ranked American man or woman, was upset in the third round of the French Open.

Elise Mertens, the 28th seed from Belgium, bounced the third seed Pegula 6-1, 6-3 to reach the round of 16. Pegula, a 29-year-old at a career-high ranking, had lost in the quarterfinals of four of the previous five majors.

Down 4-3 in the second set, Pegula squandered three break points in a 14-minute game. Mertens then broke Pegula to close it out.

Pegula’s exit leaves No. 6 seed Coco Gauff, last year’s runner-up, as the last seeded hope to become the first U.S. woman to win a major title since Sofia Kenin at the 2020 Australian Open. The 11-major span without an American champ is the longest for U.S. women since Monica Seles won the 1996 Australian Open.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

Mertens, who lost in the third or fourth round of the last six French Opens, plays a Russian Anastasia in the fourth round: Pavlyuchenkova or Potapova.

Earlier, ninth-seeded Russian Daria Kasatkina became the first player to reach the fourth round. She won 6-0, 6-1 over 69th-ranked American Peyton Stearns, the 2022 NCAA champion from Texas.

Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion, is the lone American woman left in the bottom half of the draw. She plays Kazakh Yulia Putintseva later Friday. Gauff, Bernarda Pera and Kayla Day remain in the top half.

Friday’s featured men’s matches: Top seed Carlos Alcaraz versus 26th seed Denis Shapovalov of Canada, and No. 3 Novak Djokovic against No. 29 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain.

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Olympians, Paralympians get early look at Paris on ‘Top Chef’ World All-Stars

By Nick ZaccardiJun 2, 2023, 6:36 AM EDT

A year from now, they hope to vie for medals in the City of Light. But on this day, four U.S. hopefuls for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics competed on “Top Chef” World All-Stars at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the first cross-promotional moment across NBC Universal’s One Platform for the Games.

As Parisians and tourists traversed the Champ de Mars, Olympic champions gymnast Suni Lee and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Paralympic champion swimmer Mallory Weggemann and medalist sprinter Hunter Woodhall bundled and huddled and did everything possible to stay warm between rain showers.

Then came the 30-minute frenzy. Each athlete was paired with a cheftestant for what the Bravo series calls a wall challenge: the chef and the athlete each attempted to make the same dish while separated by a divider, unable to see what the other was doing. The duo whose dishes have the closest appearance and taste win.

It’s little surprise that Weggemann prevailed. At 33 on the day of filming, she’s a decade older than the rest of the athletes.

When she was 18, Weggemann lost movement from the waist down while receiving epidural injections to treat shingles. Four years later, she swam at her first Paralympics and won her first gold medal.

“I understand that when I go onto a [filming] set like today, and I’m rolling rather than stepping, that looks different,” she said. “Not everyone who’s going to watch ‘Top Chef’ is a sports fanatic, and so they maybe don’t watch the Olympics and Paralympics, but in that moment, we got to bring them into the movement in a way that we maybe otherwise wouldn’t. I’m not oblivious to the fact that as a woman with a disability in that moment, I also have the power to change perceptions because not everyone in our society has exposure to disability.”

Each of the athletes, flown in by Delta, the official airline of Team USA through the 2028 Los Angeles Games, came at a different point in their journeys.

Weggemann has already been to three Paralympics and earned five medals. She did the “Top Chef” competition while three months pregnant. Baby Charlotte arrived March 16. Her goal is to be on the podium in Paris and be able to see her husband and daughter in the stands.

Woodhall, who won three medals in Tokyo in his Paralympic debut, visited the French capital with his then-fiancée Tara Davis, who placed sixth in the Tokyo Olympic long jump. Their Texas wedding was a month after the “Top Chef” filming.

“In Tokyo, we weren’t able to be there for each other,” said Woodhall, referring to COVID-19 travel restrictions for those Games not allowing spectators. “Paris is so exciting because we’ll both be able to really be in the moment and support each other through both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

McLaughlin-Levrone had husband Andre Levrone Jr., a former NFL practice squad wide receiver, by her side in Paris. Before “Top Chef,” she had a whirlwind spring and summer, getting married in May and then twice breaking her world record in the 400m hurdles. At the top of her sport, McLaughlin-Levrone had a decision to make in the fall and winter offseason: continue in the hurdles, where she has accomplished everything, or venture into another event, the 400m without hurdles, to test herself.

“That world record has stood for so long, and no one’s come even close to it,” she said of the flat 400m, and its 37-year-old world record, while in Paris. “So we definitely want to be able to try that and see what we can do there as well.”

Now, McLaughlin-Levrone is set to return to Paris next week for her first outdoor race since August. It will be a flat 400m. She also plans to race the 400m at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in July, and possibly at August’s world championships in lieu of the hurdles.

Top Chef World All-Stars — *Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and cheftestant Sara Bradley meet after preparing their dishes during the “Top Chef” wall challenge. (Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)*

The gymnast Lee became one of the unexpected golden stories of the Tokyo Games. After Simone Biles withdrew from the meet, the Hmong American from Minnesota seized the all-around title, the biggest prize in her sport.

She hasn’t performed in international gymnastics since. Lee matriculated at Auburn and competed for the Tigers. But NCAA gymnastics involves different routines, competitions and scoring than Olympic gymnastics. It’s such a contrast that, traditionally, joining a college team has often meant retirement from the Olympic level.

The afternoon before the “Top Chef” filming, Lee walked inside the Accor Arena in the Bercy neighborhood, the site of the 2024 Olympic gymnastics events. A competition was taking place that included the Brazilian who took silver behind Lee in Tokyo.

“I am a little nervous to get back out on the bigger stage,” Lee said then. “Going to that meet actually was really important to me because I think I needed the help of re-motivating myself and seeing what I’m getting back into, watching the competition, just getting used to that atmosphere again.”

Two months after that experience, Lee announced she would leave Auburn after her sophomore year to return to elite training for a 2024 Paris Olympic bid.

The “Top Chef” integration helps launch summer Paris Games-related fanfare, including national and world championships in many Olympic and Paralympic sports and events to mark the one-year-out dates from the Opening Ceremonies (July 26 for the Olympics, Aug. 28 for the Paralympics).

“Top Chef,” in its 20th season, previously featured Olympians before the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games and then again before Tokyo. Host Padma Lakshmi noticed a common trait.

“Their attention to detail is extraordinary,” she said. “Having that Olympic training, and really listening to what your coaches want, and what the parameters of the contest is, is something that they’re skilled at doing day in and day out.”

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