Mao Shimada wins her senior Grand Prix debut at Skate Canada
Four-time World Junior champion Mao Shimada won Skate Canada International with 235.44 points, the highest total of any woman now competing. Kevin Aymoz won the men's event.
Skate Canada International, the second Grand Prix event of the season, was held October 30-November 1 in Kelowna, British Columbia.
Women
Japan's Mao Shimada, who turned 18 two days before the event, won her first senior Grand Prix with a personal best of 235.44 points. Her free skate included a triple Axel and a quad toe loop (called under-rotated). That is the highest total of any woman currently competing, and only Kaori Sakamoto, who retired in March, has scored higher since the 2022 Olympics. Shimada has won every international event she has entered since her junior debut in 2022, including four World Junior titles.
Estonia's Niina Petrõkina took silver with a personal best of 221.07, and Isabeau Levito of the United States won bronze (212.22) in her first event of the season.
Men
France's Kevin Aymoz won his second Grand Prix title with 258.43 points, after an off-season in which illness put him in hospital several times. Japan's Rio Nakata, the reigning World Junior champion, took silver in his Grand Prix debut (249.25), and Estonia's Mihhail Selevko won the free skate to take bronze (248.66). Canada's Stephen Gogolev was fourth.
Pairs and ice dance
Canadians Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud won the pairs on home ice with 202.17 points. Americans Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov took silver (191.90), and Oxana Vouillamoz and Tom Bouvart won Switzerland's first-ever Grand Prix pairs medal (183.12).
Great Britain's Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson won the ice dance (201.17), ahead of France's Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud (192.95) and Americans Caroline Green and Michael Parsons (186.02).