Adam Siao Him Fa opened the figure skating season, and the 2030 Alps Olympic cycle, in earnest by winning Grand Prix France — his home Grand Prix — for a fourth time.
Siao Him Fa, who led by a whopping 16.97 points after Saturday’s short program, consolidated that in Sunday’s free skate with three quadruple jumps. He totaled 284.24 points and prevailed by 36.28 over Kao Miura of Japan, who improved from ninth after the short.
Siao Him Fa, who was third, fourth and fifth at the last three World Championships, is France’s top singles skater to start the quadrennial that will climax with a home Olympics, where figure skating will be in Lyon.
Mikhail Shaidorov, the surprise Olympic gold medalist from Kazakhstan, finished 10th after one fall in the short program and two falls in the free skate. He will not qualify for the six-skater Grand Prix Final in December, the second-biggest annual competition after the World Championships in March.
FIGURE SKATING: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule
The Grand Prix season continues with Skate Canada starting Friday, live on Peacock.
The Skate Canada fields are headlined by U.S. Olympian Isabeau Levito, two-time U.S. pairs’ champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov and reigning world junior singles champions Rio Nakata and Mao Shimada from Japan, each making their senior Grand Prix debut.
Earlier Sunday in pairs, Olympic and world silver medalists Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia consolidated their 1.49-point lead from the short program to win by 6.99 over neutral skaters Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitriy Kozlovskiy from Russia.
Metelkina and Berulava totaled 204.65 points. Both pairs counted a fall on a throw in the free skate.
Boikova and Kozlovskiy competed on the top international level for the first time since they placed fourth at the 2022 Olympics.
Before this season, the International Skating Union announced that skaters from Russia and Belarus can return to the Grand Prix for the first time since the war in Ukraine started, with neutral status, if they do not support the war.
Last season, one men’s and one women’s singles skater each from Belarus and Russia were allowed to compete in an Olympic qualifier, with three of the four qualifying to compete in the Milan Cortina Games as neutral skaters.
