Nathan Chen wins third Skate America title, Jason Brown joins podium with silver

By Oct 19, 2019, 8:10 PM EDT
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Nathan Chen won his third consecutive Skate America title on Saturday in Las Vegas, bringing down the house as the last skater, performing to the soundtrack from “Rocketman.”

His free skate — which included a hip hop dance break — scored 196.38 points. His total score, 299.09 points, out-distanced silver medalist Jason Brown by 44 points, the largest-ever margin of victory in the men’s field at the event. The Yale sophomore told media earlier in the week that his free skate would likely include three quadruple jumps, and that’s what he executed.

“I’m pretty happy with the performance today,” Chen said through U.S. Figure Skating. “Again, this is the first Grand Prix of the season — the first competition of the season since Worlds — so it was nice to be able to put out both programs. I’m pretty happy with the score. There are still a lot of things to improve on, but overall it’s a good starting point.”

Chen, the two-time and reigning world champion, has not lost a Grand Prix event since he earned a silver medal at the 2016 Grand Prix Final.

Skate America results are here.

Brown originally planned to debut his emotionally poignant “Schindler’s List” free skate at a competition earlier this season in Germany, but his plans were derailed when he was in a car accident and suffered a concussion over the summer. Instead, he showed this year’s free skate for the first time at Skate America, where it earned 171.64 points.

“It was my first debut of this program, Schindler’s List,” Brown said. “I’ve been working really hard on it all summer and getting into the emotion of it and working it through. I think I really tried to put my heart into it here. I had a rough go of it yesterday a little bit with confidence. I tried to put it behind me and focus on the performance and taking it one step at a time and really settling into it rather than getting ahead of myself.”

Brown won a bronze medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in the team event and followed that up with a national title in 2015. But he missed the 2018 Olympic team and is now in his second season training in Toronto under Brian Orser and Tracy Wilson. Brown’s free skate included no quads, though he said he intends to incorporate them as the season progresses.

The last time two U.S. men shared the Skate America podium was 2017, when training partners Chen and Adam Rippon earned gold and silver, respectively.

Russia’s Dmitri Aliev earned the bronze medal with 156.98-point free skate with 253.55 points overall.

China’s Jin Boyang, who finished fourth in PyeongChang, ultimately finished sixth in Las Vegas (224.98 points). His free skate included two falls on two quad attempts.

The third American man in the field, Alex Krasnozhon, finished ninth with 216.59 points.

MORE: How to watch Skate America

Earlier Saturday, China’s Peng Cheng and Jin Yang maintained their lead on the pairs’ field and won gold with a “Cloud Atlas” free skate that earned 128.16 points for an overall score of 200.89 points. It’s the team’s first-ever Grand Prix gold medal, despite Peng’s fall on a throw triple loop landing that sent her sliding into the boards.

Daria Pavliuchenko and Denis Khodykin from Russia earned silver with a 125.73-point free skate and 196.98 overall points. They were the 2018 world junior champions and skated to selections from “Tron Legacy.”

Americans Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier took the bronze with 192.70 total points, their first medal on the Grand Prix circuit since they won silver at Skate America in 2016. They actually placed second with their “Lion King” free skate which earned 127.73 points, but it didn’t make up for the deficit leftover from their short program.

“We know we have so much to bring to our team,” Denney said afterward through U.S. Figure Skating. “It’s not about winning or losing, we just want to show everyone what our potential is. This was the first baby step into building our foundation, so I’m very pleased and happy.”

“We know we have so much to bring to our team. It’s not about winning or losing, we just want to show everyone what our potential is,” Frazier added. “This was the first baby step into building our foundation, so I’m very pleased and happy.”

Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson, also from the U.S., finished fourth in their Grand Prix debut (180.52 points). Reigning U.S. national champions Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc, who won bronze at last year’s Skate America, finished fifth (177.54 points).

“We know we have so much to bring to our team,” LeDuc said. “It’s not about winning or losing, we just want to show everyone what our potential is. This was the first baby step into building our foundation, so I’m very pleased and happy.”

MORE: Hubbell, Donohue defend Skate America title | Shcherbakova lands two quads to win ladies’ event

As a reminder, you can watch the events from the 2019-20 figure skating season live and on-demand with the ‘Figure Skating Pass’ on NBC Sports Gold. Check out a free trial of the Figure Skating Pass during Skate America from Oct. 18-20. Go to NBCsports.com/gold/figure-skating to sign up for access to every ISU Grand Prix and championship event, as well as domestic U.S. Figure Skating events throughout the season. NBC Sports Gold gives subscribers an unprecedented level of access on more platforms and devices than ever before.

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Svetlana Romashina, seven-time Olympic champion artistic swimmer, retires

By Feb 6, 2023, 2:36 PM EST
Svetlana Romashina
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Russian Svetlana Romashina, the most decorated artistic swimmer in Olympic history with seven gold medals, announced her retirement at age 33.

Romashina entered seven Olympic artistic swimming events and won all of them, starting in 2008. She won four Olympic titles in the team event and three in the duet (two with Nataliya Ishchenko and one with Svetlana Kolesnichenko).

The Tokyo Games marked her last major competition.

Romashina is the only woman to go undefeated in her Olympic career while entering seven or more events. The only man to do so was American track and field athlete Ray Ewry, who won all eight of his Olympic starts from 1900-08, according to Olympedia.org.

Romashina also won 21 world championships medals — all gold, second in aquatics history behind Michael Phelps‘ 26.

She took nearly two years off after giving birth to daughter Alexandra in November 2017, then came back to win three golds at her last world championships in 2019 and two golds at her last Olympics in 2021.

Romashina is now an artistic swimming coach, according to Russian media.

Russian swimmers swept the Olympic duet and team titles at each of the last six Olympics.

Russians have been banned from international competition since March due to the war in Ukraine.

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Mikaela Shiffrin, three gates from gold, skis out of world championships combined

By Feb 6, 2023, 1:22 PM EST
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Mikaela Shiffrin was three gates from a record-tying seventh world championships gold medal when she lost her balance and straddled a gate, skiing out of the first race of worlds on Monday.

Italian Federica Brignone won the women’s combined instead, prevailing by 1.62 seconds over Swiss Wendy Holdener, the largest Olympic or world championships men’s or women’s margin of victory in the event since it switched from three runs to two in 2007.

Austrian Ricarda Haaser took bronze in an event that is one run of super-G followed by one run of slalom.

At 32, Brignone, the 2020 World Cup overall champion, won her first global title and became the oldest female world champion in any event.

“What was missing in my career was a gold medal,” she said. “So I’m old. No, I’m just kidding.”

ALPINE WORLDS: Results | Broadcast Schedule

Shiffrin was sixth fastest in the opening super-G run, 96 hundredths behind Brignone. She skied aggressively in the slalom in a bid to beat Brignone. Shiffrin cut the gap to eight hundredths by the last intermediate split with about 10 seconds left on the course in Meribel, France.

Shiffrin looked set to overtake Brignone until tripping up slightly with five gates left. It compounded, and Shiffrin couldn’t save the run, losing control, straddling the third-to-last gate and skiing out. The timing system still registered her finish — 34 hundredths faster than Brignone — but it was quickly corrected to the obvious disqualification.

Asked on French TV if she lost focus, Shiffrin said, “People are going to say that no matter what.”

“The surface changed a little bit on these last gates, so [on pre-race] inspection I saw it’s a bit more unstable on the snow,” she added. “I tried to be aware of that, but I knew that if I had a chance to make up nine tenths on Federica, or more than that, like one second, I had to push like crazy. So I did, and I had a very good run. I’m really happy with my skiing.”

It marked Shiffrin’s first time skiing out since she did so in three races at last February’s Olympics, where her best individual finish was ninth in five races. At the Olympics, she skied out within the first 13 seconds in each instance. On Monday, she was more than 40 seconds into her run.

“I was thinking, now I’m going to go through the mixed zone. and everyone’s going to ask, ‘Oh, is this Beijing again?'” Shiffrin said. “I didn’t really think about that for myself, but more for the people asking. But I also said before, coming into this world champs multiple times, I’m not afraid if it happens again. What if I don’t finish every run? What happened last year, and I survived. And then I’ve had some pretty amazing races this season. So I would take the season that I’ve had with no medals at the world championships. If it’s either/or, then I would take that. I’m happy with it. But I’m going to be pushing for medals, because that’s what you do at world champs. You wear your heart on your sleeve, and you go for it. I’m not afraid of the consequences, as long as I have that mentality, which I had today.”

NBC Sports analyst Steve Porino said what happened Monday was “completely different” from the Olympics, calling it “an error of aggression.”

“It certainly wasn’t nerves that sent her out,” Porino said on the Peacock broadcast. “This was Shiffrin knowing that she had to have a huge run to get the gold medal.

“The way she went out this time, I think she can brush that one off.”

Shiffrin was bidding to tie the modern-era records for individual world championships gold medals (seven) and total medals (12). Coming into Monday, she earned a medal in her last 10 world championships races dating to 2015.

Her next chance to match those records comes in Wednesday’s super-G, where she is a medal contender. Norway’s Ragnhild Mowinckel is the world’s top-ranked super-G skier through five races on the World Cup this season, though she was 71 hundredths behind Brignone in Monday’s super-G run.

Shiffrin has raced two super-Gs this season with a win and a seventh place.

She is expected to race three more times over the two-week worlds, which is separate from the World Cup circuit that she has torn up this season.

Shiffrin has a tour-leading 11 World Cup wins in 23 starts across all disciplines since November, moving her one shy of the career victories record of 86 accumulated by Swede Ingemar Stenmark in the 1970s and ’80s. Again, world championships races do not count toward the World Cup, which picks back up after worlds end in late February.

Worlds continue Tuesday with the men’s combined.

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