Storylines to watch at the Grand Prix Final

By Rachel LutzNov 26, 2019, 10:31 AM EST

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The Grand Prix Final is an exclusive figure skating event that caps the first part of the season before skaters move toward their national championships. The 2019 edition in particular is significant, marking the halfway point between the Olympic cycles.

Skaters score points at up to two Grand Prix events throughout the fall, and the top-scoring finishers are invited to the Grand Prix Final, Dec. 5-8 in Torino, Italy. (Streaming live and on-demand for NBC Sports Gold subscribers.)

With only six skaters/teams in each discipline, it is a small preview of March’s world championships; however, it brings a prestige all its own. Let’s examine the major storylines.

Grand Prix Series Standings: Men | Ladies | Pairs | Ice Dance | Qualifiers

Men
Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan returns to the Grand Prix Final for the first time since 2016. Hanyu missed the previous two editions due to injury; however, Hanyu owns four straight Grand Prix Finals from 2013-16.

Two-time world champion Nathan Chen won the 2017 and 2018 Grand Prix Finals in Hanyu’s absence. They competed head-to-head at March’s world championships, where Chen won and Hanyu earned silver.

But this will be their first Grand Prix Final head-to-head since Chen began his winning streak, undefeated since placing fifth at the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018.

The men’s field:
1. Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN)
2. Nathan Chen (USA)
3. Alexander Samarin (RUS)
4. Dmitri Aliev (RUS)
5. Kevin Aymoz (FRA)
6. Jin Boyang (CHN)

MORE: Nathan Chen on his hip-hop “Rocketman” free skate

Women
The top three Russians to qualify for the Grand Prix Final — Alena Kostornaia (16), Alexandra Trusova (15), and Anna Shcherbakova (15) — were the same top qualifiers for last year’s Junior Grand Prix Final. Kostornaia won, followed by Trusova, and Shcherbakova was fifth.

All three are in their first senior season. They train together in Moscow under coach Eteri Tutberidze, alongside reigning Olympic and world champion Alina Zagitova (17).

While Zagitova has never landed a quadruple jump or triple Axel in competition, Kostornaia’s free skate includes two triple Axels; Trusova’s free skate includes up to four quads; and Shcherbakova’s free skate includes two quad Lutzes.

For her part, Japan’s Rika Kihira (17) is capable of two triple Axels in her free skate, as well.

American Bradie Tennell is the oldest in the field by four years at 21.

The women’s field:
1. Alena Kostornaia (RUS)
2. Alexandra Trusova (RUS)
3. Anna Shcherbakova (RUS)
4. Rika Kihira (JPN)
5. Alina Zagitova (RUS)
6. Bradie Tennell (USA)

MORE: Bradie Tennell’s personality shines through at Skate America

Pairs
China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are the most decorated team in the Grand Prix Final with two world championships and an Olympic silver medal. Last year, they had an abbreviated season due to Sui’s stress fracture in her right foot but rallied for a Four Continents title and their second world title. They won both of their regular-season Grand Prix events: Cup of China and NHK Trophy.

Relative newcomers Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitriy Kozlovskiy of Russia also won both of their regular-season Grand Prix events, too: Skate Canada and Rostelecom Cup.

Notably, Russia’s Yevgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov (two-time European champions who have taken three trips to the Grand Prix Final, even winning in 2016) were seventh in the overall standings and missed the cut.

The pairs’ field:
1. Sui Wenjing/Han Cong (CHN)
2. Aleksandra Boikova/Dmitriy Kozlovskiy (RUS)
3. Peng Cheng/Jin Yang (CHN)
4. Anastasia Mishina/Aleksandr Galliamov (RUS)
5. Kirsten Moore-Towers/Michael Marinaro (CAN)
6. Daria Pavliuchenko/Denis Khodykin (RUS)

Ice dance

Four-time world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France missed last year’s Grand Prix Final because they pulled out of one of their regular-series events and were unable to qualify. But in their most recent Final, in 2017, they won and defeated eventual PyeongChang Olympic gold medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada.

In their stead, American training partners Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue, the two-time U.S. dance champions, took the 2018 Grand Prix Final. Another team they train with in Montreal, Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, also return to the Grand Prix Final after missing the Grand Prix regular season last year due to injury.

The ice dance field:

1. Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron (FRA)
2. Viktoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapov (RUS)
3. Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (CAN)
4. Madison Hubbell/Zach Donohue (USA)
5. Alexandra Stepanova/Ivan Bukin (RUS)
6. Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA)

MORE: Gabriella Papadakis, Guillaume Cizeron on ‘Fame,’ chasing history

An American lens

Nathan Chen is making his fourth consecutive appearance in the Grand Prix Final, an event he’s won twice. The Yale sophomore will be the only American man in the field.

The American women have their first representative in the Grand Prix Final since 2015, when Gracie Gold and Ashley Wagner competed. This is Tennell’s first appearance in a Grand Prix Final.

The top two American ice dance teams are into the Final: Hubbell and Donohue, who won the event last year, and Chock and Bates. Prior to missing last year’s Final, Chock and Bates made four straight Finals and won two silver medals. This should offer a preview of what audiences can expect at the U.S. national championships in January from these two teams, who train together in Montreal.

There hasn’t been a U.S. pair team in a Grand Prix Final since 2015 (Alexa Scimeca Knierim and Chris Knierim). Before that, Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker skated in the 2007 Grand Prix Final, but withdrew after the short program due to injury.

MORE: Yuzuru Hanyu, Alina Zagitova make NHK Trophy podium and set Grand Prix Final fields

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. 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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Britton Wilson doubles like nobody else in track and field

By Nick ZaccardiJun 8, 2023, 6:49 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Sprinter Britton Wilson regularly updates a vision board in her apartment living room. As of last week, there were two numbers on it among a collage of pictures: 48 and 52.

The 48 is for the 400m. Wilson’s short-term goal is to become the third U.S. woman to break 49 seconds in the one-lap event after Olympic gold medalists Sanya Richards-Ross and Valerie Brisco-Hooks.

The 52 is for the 400m hurdles. She wants to become the 10th U.S. woman to break 53 seconds in that event.

They are not far-fetched ambitions. Wilson, a University of Arkansas junior, has already run 49.13 in the flat 400m and 53.08 in the 400m hurdles. She is the only woman to rank among the 25 fastest in history in both events. She is the fourth-fastest American all-time in the flat 400m, passing Allyson Felix last month.

At this week’s NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Austin, Texas, Wilson will bid to become the first person to win Division I titles in the same year in both the 400m and the 400m hurdles.

On Thursday night, she will race the 400m semifinals just after 9 p.m. local time. A half-hour later, she will race the 400m hurdles semifinals. If she advances, she will race the two finals Saturday with a scheduled 24 minutes in between.

In most cases, a runner would only race twice in that short of a turnaround for the 100m or 200m. Wilson is not only attempting a rarity, but she is also the clear top seed in both events.

Last year, Wilson won both at the SEC Championships with about an hour in between the finals, then entered only the hurdles at the NCAA Championships. She won all of those races. This year, Wilson again won both at SECs. Afterward, she met with coach Chris Johnson, who asked what she wanted to do at NCAAs. Wilson chose both.

“I wanted to see how much I can challenge myself and how far I can push myself,” she said.

Ask those who know Wilson best, and they will tell you that her plan, while unprecedented, is not audacious for her.

Her high school coach will tell you that Wilson ran a nation-leading 300m hurdles time on a Friday night in Richmond, Virginia. She got home around 11. The next morning, she went to another meet and ran the fastest flat 400m in Virginia high school history.

Her mom, who nicknamed her “baby giraffe” in middle school for her early running form, will tell you about the 2018 state championships. Wilson stopped en route to the meet at a CVS to pick up medication for a stomach virus. Once they arrived, nobody could find her. Wilson was in a portable bathroom. When she got out, she looked so out of sorts that adults told her not to race. She checked herself in anyway, then won the 400m and the 200m.

Wilson herself will tell you about the 2017 state championships race the family has come to call by the first two words of its YouTube title.

“So I run track, and if you’re wondering if I’m good or not, here’s one of my highlights,” she said, setting up the story in a TikTok video.

Wilson, then a sophomore, was desperately trying to catch a senior in the adjacent lane in the home stretch of the 400m final. Feet from the finish line, Wilson fell. She scraped her knee (above her tall, pink Victoria’s Secret socks), shoulder (there’s still a scar) and head. For a moment, her legs flung above her body. Wilson then crawled across the finish line to secure second place.

Mom LeYuani rushed from behind a fence to find her daughter under a tent. Nearly as quickly, the finish was already spreading on social media.

LeYuani watched the video in sight of her daughter, but didn’t tell her about it. Determined, Wilson said she was staying in the meet to race the 200m later that day. She did. She won in a personal-best time.

LeYuani remembers Wilson moaning in the backseat of the car on the two-hour drive home. Tylenol lessened the suffering, but didn’t eliminate it.

Wilson has athletic genes. Her mom, a second-grade teacher who has worked in classrooms for 26 years, was a long jumper in school. She taught her kids that event by sprinting from the dining room, through the kitchen, into the family room and then launching nearly into the fireplace.

Her dad, Vince, started at point guard for Virginia Commonwealth, then was the first American to play in the top Russian professional basketball league, according to a contact with the current iteration of the league. Wilson, while on an international exchange program in Russia, said he was asked to play for Spartak Leningrad in 1990 by its head coach, Vladimir Kondrashin. Kondrashin was also the head coach of the 1972 Soviet Olympic team that beat the U.S. in that infamous final.

Wilson, whom the family calls by her middle name, “Rose,” was all-state in track and all-county in chorus and taught herself how to play the guitar.

She first matriculated at the University of Tennessee in 2019. Her freshman year coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wiped out the outdoor season. In her down time, she auditioned virtually for “American Idol” and made it as far as seeing Ryan Seacrest on a screen.

As a sophomore, she was running slower than she was in high school. Looking for solutions, Wilson stopped eating.

“A lot of things contributed to my mental health not being the best,” she said on a University of Arkansas athletics podcast. “I had a lot of physical issues. I was in and out of doctors.”

She confided in her parents and decided to transfer. She said that if it wasn’t for Arkansas, the first and only school that she visited, she probably would have quit the sport.

“You have athletes that compete at a very high level, but you also have those athletes that are so mentally strong, they can overcome a lot of things,” Vince said.

Wilson has thrived under coach Chris Johnson, whose older brother, Boogie, coaches 2016 Olympic 400m hurdles champion Dalilah Muhammad.

“[Johnson] is always listening to how we feel, and he hears us instead of just dismissing it,” Wilson said. “He knows he’s a great coach, and he knows his training works, but he’s also going to hear me out if something doesn’t feel right.”

Last year, Wilson’s first in Fayetteville, she chopped two seconds off her 400m personal best and three seconds off her 400m hurdles personal best. She capped a full NCAA indoor and outdoor slate by winning the NCAA 400m hurdles title. She then went eight tenths faster at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships, which is normally where collegians run slower after exhausting seasons. Wilson placed second to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to make the world championships team.

Then at worlds, Wilson was fifth in the 400m hurdles. Two days later, Wilson was thrilled to be picked for the women’s 4x400m relay the day of the final. She handed the baton to McLaughlin-Levrone — whom she raced once in high school, when Wilson was a sophomore and McLaughlin-Levrone was a senior — and won a gold medal.

“She admired and adored Sydney,” said Gene Scott, her high school coach. “You remember the old commercial, ‘Be Like Mike?’ She wanted to be like Sydney.”

After this week’s NCAAs come the USATF Outdoor Championships in early July. There, the 400m final and 400m hurdles semifinals are 15 minutes apart. Told of that schedule, Wilson said running both is “doable,” but she’d probably race just one event this year. Her coach said they’ll decide after NCAAs.

Wilson is ranked second in the world in 2023 in both events.

At NCAAs, USAs and worlds (if she makes the team), Wilson will get into the blocks and look down. If she peeks inside her right hand, she will see a tattoo on the inside of one finger reading “24K.” Wilson and her mom both got that tattoo — the first for each — to commemorate the world championships relay gold medal.

After worlds, Wilson spent about two months in a boot and on crutches to alleviate stress reactions in both shins, pain that she raced through last summer. She had messed up her kidneys and stomach by taking four ibuprofen a day. She swam, biked and tread carefully on a treadmill while unable to run last fall.

This spring, she got another tattoo — the word “Baby” in memory of her half Pekingese, half poodle that died last summer. She got it on her left hand, “so when my hands are in the blocks, if somebody takes a picture of me, you’ll see it,” she said.

On Saturday, Wilson plans to put her hands on the track twice in a span of 25 minutes. Many will watch.

“She wants to accomplish something that’s never been done before,” Johnson said.

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2023 French Open men’s singles draw

By OlympicTalkJun 7, 2023, 5:18 PM EDT

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The French Open men’s singles draw is missing injured 14-time champion Rafael Nadal for the first time since 2004, leaving the Coupe des Mousquetaires ripe for the taking.

The tournament airs live on NBC Sports, Peacock and Tennis Channel through championship points in Paris.

Novak Djokovic is not only bidding for a third crown at Roland Garros, but also to lift a 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy to break his tie with Nadal for the most in men’s history.

FRENCH OPEN: Broadcast Schedule | Women’s Draw

But the No. 1 seed is Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who won last year’s U.S. Open to become, at 19, the youngest man to win a major since Nadal’s first French Open title in 2005.

Now Alcaraz looks to become the second-youngest man to win at Roland Garros since 1989, after Nadal of course.

Alcaraz missed the Australian Open in January due to a right leg injury, but since went 30-3 with four titles. Notably, he has not faced Djokovic this year. They meet in Friday’s semifinals.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round by 172nd-ranked Brazilian qualifier Thiago Seyboth Wild. It marked the first time a men’s top-two seed lost in the first round of any major since 2003 Wimbledon (Ivo Karlovic d. Lleyton Hewitt).

All of the American men lost before the fourth round. The last U.S. man to make the French Open quarterfinals was Andre Agassi in 2003.

MORE: All you need to know for 2023 French Open

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

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