The best of Skate America 2014

Skate America opened up the 2014/2015 grand prix series. Here is a list of the most noticeable facts of the competition.

DANCE EVENT

*Chock/Bates won their first grand prix event of their career beating the Shibutanis

*USA conquered for the first time in a grand prix dance event the gold and silver medal

*The young Russian couple Stepanova/Bukin got their first senior bronze medal despite a serious accident occured in practice

*Canadian couple Paradis/Ouelette placed in 4th overall after being 8th in the short program with a very interesting free skate

MEN'S EVENT

*Tatsuki Machida won the competition with over 35 points of lead on the second placed with two impressive programs

*Jason Brown conquered his second grand prix medal finishing in second place

*Nam Nguyen won a unexpected bronze medal coming from the 7th place of the short program. He nailed a quad salchow, a couple of good triple axels and was spot on on every other element of his free program

*Jeremy Abbott, in second place after the short program, struggled on many jumps and got a fifth place overall

*Denis Ten struggled here and there and placed fourth

PAIRS EVENT

*Kavaguti/Smirnov, who were solidly in first place after the short, has a spectacoular free skate nailing all of their elements, including a triple toe-triple toe sequence and a throw quad salchow. They won with 209.16

*Denney/Frezier, newly coached by Ingo Steuer who trains them alongside with their previeous coaches Fontana and Zimmerman, showed off a massive improvement from past season and performed a very clean free skate. They owned their first grand prix medal with 183.84 points.

*Peng/Zhang have improved choreography and transition wise, but struggled with side by side jumps. In spite of a gorgeous quad twist and two very solid throws, they lost the second place.

LADIES EVENT
*Elena Radionova won Skate America after being second in the short program. She nailed seven triples including a triple lutz-triple toe and a triple loop-single loop-triple salchow.
*Elizaveta Tuktamisheva got the silver medal with an overall clean yet conservative free skate counting 5 triples.
*Gracie Gold manteined her third place from the short program scoring the highest components of the night (63.22). Her jumps were tight and temptative. She wasn't given credit for a double salchow-double toe-double toe because she had already done a double toe which cannot be repeated for more than two times (new technical rule).