LADIES

Meissner, who turned 17 earlier this month, recorded a nearly flawless free skate and finished with a score of 177.78 to win the silver medal. She nailed six triple jumps, including an opening triple Lutz-triple toe combination. She didn’t attempt a triple Axel.

“I feel awesome,” Meissner said. “It feels so good because it’s been such a rivalry in the media between me and the Japanese skaters. I admit it feels good to be on top right now.”

A year has made the difference for Japan’s Ando, who resurrected a struggling career with a personal-best performance to win the gold medal against competition that featured arguably the two best skaters in the world today – country mate Mao Asada and Meissner.

Asada, who led after the short program, failed on her opening triple Axel attempt and faded back to third place overall (fourth in the free skate). Ando battled injuries last year and struggled with her jumps. She placed sixth at her national competition and 15th at the Olympic Winter Games. In the last few months, she has switched coaches and appears to have turned a new corner.

American Emily Hughes, 17, ran into some bad luck early in her program as she received no credit for a planned triple flip-double loop. She settled for a fifth place overall finish.

“Going out there I felt a lot of confidence and my double Axel (opening element) felt amazing,” said Hughes, who finished seventh at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games and eighth at the World Championships. “I kind of tripped a bit on the flip and I came back but it wasn’t the same. You always want to do better than the time before and I didn’t do that. That just means go home and put in more hard work. I’m not really happy with the way I skated, but that is what makes it a sport. You go out there sometimes and have a great skate and sometimes you fall on your face. Hopefully next time I won’t fall on my face.”

Her teammate, Katy Taylor, experienced more woes with her free skate, falling twice and finishing 11th. The 16-year-old from Houston never got into a rhythm. She’s been battling equipment problems in recent weeks, which she said has cut into her practice time.

“My jumps are feeling better, but I think that mentally I don’t feel prepared,” Taylor said. “And I’ve had a lot of personal things going on. My boots are fine this time but I couldn’t get my mounting right. Actually, the day we were scheduled to leave we figured it out, but by then we’d already lost two weeks.”

PAIRS

The teams of Inoue & Baldwin and Nam & Leftheris accomplished something Saturday night that had not been done by two U.S. pairs teams in 10 years: win a medal at the same ISU Grand Prix event.

Despite a less than stellar free skate by both teams, Inoue & Baldwin captured the gold medal, while Nam & Leftheris garnered the bronze, losing out on the silver by 0.15 points (161.47-161.32) to the Polish husband-and-wife team of Dorota Siudek & Mariusz Siudek. It was the first Grand Prix gold medal for Inoue & Baldwin and the first Grand Prix medal of any color for Nam & Leftheris.

Baldwin had trouble right from the get-go, falling on the first element in the program, the triple toe. Later on, he stepped out of the first part of a planned double Axel-double Axel sequence. Inoue also hit the ice, falling on the throw triple Axel. They did manage to land their throw triple loop, and their spins and lifts were graded level fours.

“We need a little bit more practice on this program,” Baldwin said. “We really only had a couple weeks to work out it, so the main goal is to get all the levels that we did. We got a level four on almost every element, and that’s a big accomplishment.”

Inoue & Baldwin totaled 110.62 points for the free skate, less than half a point behind the Poles, who won the segment with a score of 111.13.

Nam & Leftheris started their “Gayaneh” program with a bang, nailing both their triple toe-triple toe sequence and throw triple Salchow. She, however, fell and went sliding into the boards on their attempted throw triple loop, and from that point on they seemed to run out of gas, as the timing on their spins was off and the speed of their step sequence slowed.

“We're really proud of ourselves, because it’s our first Grand Prix assignment and only our third major competition as a pairs team,” Leftheris said. “I felt like we did a really good job with the short, and I felt like we lost some steam at the end of the long, but we fought through the whole thing.” 

The U.S. team of Tiffany Vise & Derek Trent, who like Nam & Leftheris were also competing in their first Grand Prix event, improved from seventh in the short program to sixth in the free skate, and ended up in sixth overall with 131.19 points. The best parts of their “Les Miserables” program were their lifts and a clean throw triple loop.

“I think we’re very satisfied, with this being our first time in a Grand Prix,” Vise said. “It can be a little overwhelming, but we went out there, took it all in, had a lot of fun and enjoyed every minute.”

ICE DANCING

Gregory & Petukhov are a different ice dancing team this week. It could be that for the first time in a competition in the United States, they are the top American duo. It could be that they are skating on their former home turf, having trained in the Hartford area for more than three years. Or it could be the influence of new coaches Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov, who have pushed Gregory and Petukhov to a new level in the sport.

It’s probably a little bit of all three. Regardless, it all added up to a silver medal for the team, their highest finish at a Grand Prix event and second medal (they won bronze at Skate Canada last year). They scored 90.35 points and received a standing ovation from the crowd.

“The fans were amazing; they were with us the whole way,” Gregory said. “They helped us through it and if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t even have anybody to perform for. It was great.”

World champions Albena Denkova & Maxim Staviski skated to an almost anticlimactic gold medal to “Seven Deadly Sins.”

Gregory and Petukhov weren’t the only U.S. team to make its mark at Skate America. Morgan Matthews & Max Zavozin finished third in the free dance (ahead of France’s bronze medalists Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat) and fourth overall.

“We need to train ourselves a little more, but overall it was good,” Zavozin said. “We were confident with our skating, and the bottom line is I guess we are pleased with ourselves and the way we did the whole competition here.”

Kimberly Navarro & Brent Bommentre breezed their way through a Beatles medley to finish sixth in their Grand Prix debut. They scored a personal-best 77.59 points, and with improvement on difficulty for their circular step sequence and rotational lift, which both received level twos, they can only go higher.

“We’re very honored to be out here on the Skate America ice,” Navarro said. “It’s slightly intimidating at times, but I’m glad we rose to the occasion.”