Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue notched the biggest win for American ice dancers in nearly five years at the Grand Prix Final in Vancouver on Saturday night. It’s all part of the plan.
“Our goal going into the season was to win every competition,” Hubbell said after completing a perfect autumn Grand Prix Series. “We are three steps there.”
The U.S. champions and world silver medalists topped both the rhythm dance and free dance to capture the second-biggest annual international competition. The only other American couple to win on this significant of a stage was Meryl Davis and Charlie White, most recently at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Hubbell and Donohue tallied their highest score this season, 205.35 points, and won by 3.98 over Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov.
The Americans completed a breakthrough 2018: also a first national title in January (after six times finishing third or fourth), their first Olympics in February (finishing fourth after a free-dance fall), their first world championships medal in March and sweeping their Grand Prix Series starts for the first time in October.
Another U.S. couple, Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, finished sixth out of six Saturday in their Grand Prix Final debut.
The competition lacked every PyeongChang Olympic medalist.
Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have likely competed for the last time, though haven’t announced retirement. French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron are the top-ranked couple this season (by a whopping 11.43 points) but were ineligible for the Final after missing their first Grand Prix due to Cizeron’s minor back injury. Americans Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani are taking this season off and might be done competing, too.
Another accomplished couple, two-time world medalists Madison Chock and Evan Bates, sat out the Grand Prix season due to Chock’s ankle surgery but could return to go for a seventh straight medal at nationals next month.
Hubbell and Donohue will be clear favorites there, but to accomplish Hubbell’s now-publicly stated goal, they will likely have to beat their French training partners at the world championships in March. Hubbell and Donohue never outscored Papadakis and Cizeron in nine head-to-head competitions and were more than 10 points adrift at last season’s worlds.
Later Saturday in pairs, French Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres rallied from fourth place in the short program for the biggest win of their eight-year partnership against a field lacking all of the PyeongChang medalists.
Grand Prix Final Ice Dance Results Gold: Madison Hubbell/Zachary Donohue (USA) -- 205.35 Silver: Victoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapov (RUS) -- 201.37 Bronze: Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri (ITA) -- 198.65 4. Alexandra Stepanova/Ivan Bukin (RUS) -- 196.72 5. Tiffani Zagorski/Jonathan Guerreiro (RUS) -- 184.37 6. Kaitlin Hawayek/Jean-Luc Baker (USA) -- 184.04
Grand Prix Final Pairs’ Results Gold: Vanessa James/Morgan Cipres (FRA) -- 219.88 Silver: Peng Cheng/Jin Yang (CHN) -- 216.90 Bronze: Yevgenia Tarasova/Vladimir Morozov (RUS) -- 214.20 4. Natalya Zabiyako/Alexander Enbert (RUS) -- 201.07 5. Nicole Della Monica/Matteo Guarise (ITA) -- 187.63 6. Daria Pavliuchenko/Denis Khodykin (RUS) -- 186.81
VIDEO: Adam Rippon appears on ‘Will & Grace’
OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!