2021 Guaranteed Rate Skate America concluded this afternoon at The Orleans Arena in Las Vegas with the free dance and women's free skate, and U.S. skaters put out performances to rival the bright lights of the Strip.
Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue won their fourth straight Skate America© title in ice dance, ahead of teammates and training mates
Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who took silver. In the women's competition,
Amber Glenn led the way with a strong free skate to place sixth.
On Saturday night,
Vincent Zhou won the men's event, collecting his first Grand Prix title, while
Nathan Chen earned the bronze medal.
Jimmy Ma finished a career-best fifth.
Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were the top U.S. finishers in the pairs event in fourth place.
Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson placed fifth overall, and
Chelsea Liu and Danny O'Shea finished seventh in their Grand Prix debut.
ICE DANCE
If this season is it for Hubbell and Donohue, it's certainly off to a start befitting champions.
The pair won their fourth consecutive Skate America© title, scoring 125.96 points for their free dance to "Drowning" by Anna Sila and 209.54 points overall.
"I couldn't really be happier with the performance today," Hubbell said. "Something clicked this morning, and I really felt great on practice, and I just wanted to keep that feeling and skate for myself and really be there with Zach and present to the performance from the beginning to the end. And I think we both accomplished that goal, and in doing so, also accomplished the other goal, which was to come out with gold."
Chock and Bates earned silver with 208.23 points, while Canada's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen grabbed bronze with 190.13 points.
Only Olympic champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White have ever won four straight Skate America© titles in ice dance, doing so from 2010-13.
"I think for me, it's just a feeling of overwhelming gratitude, being our last Skate America and fourth consecutive win for us," Donohue said. "It means quite a lot, especially to be able to have a live audience."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chock and Bates were right on their heels, their free dance to "Contact," "Within" and "Touch" by Daft Punk earning 125.68 points.
"Evan and I are extremely happy with how we performed today," Chock said. "We love stepping into these characters of the alien and the astronaut. We find that they're so unique and always interesting for us to explore, no matter whether it's training or a competition, and this was definitely another step up. We're very pleased with how everything went this week."
The two teams are often neck-and-neck at competitions, having finished first and second at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships© the last three years and sharing podiums dating back to 2013.
"We know that, if they skate their best, we also have to skate our best," Hubbell said. "And when we knew that they were going to be at Skate America, we kind of made that assumption that we would have to be in amazing shape, so we did everything that we needed to do at home in order to feel like we were prepared for this challenge. And they definitely laid it out there. We expect it to be close until we retire."
"I feel like the word rivalry is used with a negative connotation too often," Bates added. "I think that, especially in this case, the rivalry has been great for both teams. Especially since we've moved to Montreal, they've shaped a lot of how we work and how driven we are, and I don't think we would be the team that we are without years and years of close competitions and rivalry, but a good rivalry."
With Hubbell and Donohue preparing to step away from competitive ice at the end of this season, that rivalry will soon be coming to an end. Coming into their final Skate America©, the duo wanted to leave everything on the ice.
"Knowing that it's our last season, we really took a lot of time to sit down and try to understand what our weak points were and what things have held us back in the past," Hubbell said. "We didn't want to play it safe with elements, and we wanted to push ourselves physically. And so certainly our approach to this season and this Skate America was to try to be in the best shape we've ever been at a Skate America, and I can say we're very proud of where we are physically. We felt really free to perform today."
Molly Cesanek and Yehor Yehorov finished ninth, earning 95.90 for their free dance to a contemporary medley for a total of 156.97 in their grand prix debut.
"We're really extremely proud and happy with our performance yesterday and today," Yehorov said. "We did absolutely our best. We executed everything the way we were wanting and dreaming to accomplish at this competition."
WOMEN
Glenn may not have earned a spot on the podium at Skate America©, but her performance was a victory all the same.
Glenn scored 133.45 points for her free skate to "Rain in Your Black Eyes (remake)" by Misha Ge, giving her 201.02 points and a sixth-place finish overall.
It was the first time she exceeded 130 points in a free skate and 200 points overall in an international competition.
"Breaking that point target internationally for the first time, it really makes me feel like I'm up there," Glenn said. "It's not just, 'Oh, she got second at nationals (U.S. Championships). Oh, she did this in her own country.' It's like, I know I can hold my own internationally, and this is just a taste of that. It's not even all I have to offer."
Russia's Alexandra Trusova and Daria Usacheva won gold and silver with 232.37 and 217.31 points, respectively, while Young You of the Republic of Korea took bronze with 216.97 points.
At the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Glenn scored 144.50 points for her free skate and 215.33 points overall for a dazzling silver-medal finish, the best of her career.
It was a performance that solidified her among the top U.S. women and, with strong results this season, makes her a contender for the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team.
"I never thought I really had a chance at it, because I was kind of a mid-pack kind of girl," Glenn said. "And it wasn't until the pandemic, really, that I thought, 'Okay. I'm going to take my shot at it.' So all I really think about is going and doing the most I can and not leaving anything on the table this season. I don't want to have any regrets about what I do."
While Glenn is pleased enough with her free skate in Las Vegas, she knows that she's capable of so much more.
"Seeing that a performance that I know I could have done better in still got a decent, pretty good score, knowing that I can continue to build on that gives me a lot of confidence, and it makes me happy that others are able to see, or at least kind of see, what I'm capable of in competition," Glenn said. "I'm not just a one-off."
Starr Andrews finished 10th overall with 177.63 points, earning 115.69 points for her free skate to "Bigger" and "I Was Here" by Beyoncé.
"I've been training multiple programs a day, and to go out there and put out one of the programs that I've been working so hard on is such an achievement, even if some of the jumps were shaky," Andrews said. "Fighting through the whole program is my number one goal, because you never know when you're going to have a bad day or competition. So really just fighting through the program, and really connecting to the audience and the music, it's just an amazing experience."
In 12th place,
Audrey Shin earned 160.78 points overall and 97.96 points for her free skate to "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig van Beethhoven and YUNDI.
"Honestly, I don't really know what happened in the program," Shin said. "I felt so out of it. But I think this is also something to learn how to get myself back together quickly. But today was pretty rough."
Fans can re-watch the action on-demand on Peacock Premium.
