Skate America: Riku Miura, Ryuichi Kihara lead after pairs’ short program

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ALLEN, Texas — Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara opened figure skating’s Grand Prix season by topping the pairs’ short program at Skate America, where they bid for their first title since winning the 2023 World Championship.

Miura, 22, and Kihara, 32, tallied 77.79 points, the world’s best score this season by 3.12 points.

They took a significant 7.13-point lead over U.S. champions Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea going into Saturday’s free skate.

Skate America is the first of six competitions in six weeks on the Grand Prix Series, where the world’s top skaters compete at two events each. The top six per discipline over the series qualify for December’s Grand Prix Final, which is often a preview of the world championships the following March.

SKATE AMERICA: Broadcast Schedule

In March 2023, Miura and Kihara became the first Japanese pair to win a world title.

They missed the fall 2023 Grand Prix season due to Kihara’s back injury, then returned to take silver at both the Four Continents Championships in February and the world championships in March.

With none of the 2022 Olympic pairs’ medalists currently competing internationally, the event is fairly open with 16 months until the Milan-Cortina Games.

Canadians Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps won last season’s world title, though Miura and Kihara had the best free skate score. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps make their Grand Prix season debut at Skate Canada next week.

Kam and O’Shea were the top U.S. pair at worlds in 11th place, followed immediately by Emily Chan and Spencer Howe and Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez.

Americans Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, the 2022 World champions, stepped away from competition after the 2022-23 season.

Skate America continues later Friday with the women’s short program, live on E! an Peacock.

2024 Skate America Results Pairs’ Short Program 1. Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) — 77.79 2. Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (USA) -- 70.66 3. Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava (GEO) -- 68.64 4. Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko (HUN) -- 65.11 5. Alisa Efimova/Misha Mitrofanov (USA) -- 63.05 6. Anastasia Vaipan-Law/Luke Digby (GBR) -- 61.31 7. Milania Vaananen/Filippo Clerici (FIN) -- 60.23 8. Katie McBeath/Daniil Parkman (USA) -- 56.69

Ilia Malinin plans to do a backflip at Skate America after figure skating officials made it legal for the first time in nearly 50 years.

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Skate America: Riku Miura, Ryuichi Kihara lead after pairs’ short program

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