Two-time World Championships medalist Mone Chiba held off returning mom Alexandra Ignatova to win Cup of China, while Sophie Joline von Felten made some U.S. figure skating history.
Japan’s Chiba landed a triple flip-triple toe loop combination and had just one barely negatively graded jumping pass in her “Clair de Lune” free skate.
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It was enough to hold off Ignatova (née Trusova) of Russia, who had the highest-scoring free skate, which included a quadruple Lutz.
Chiba, who led Ignatova by 3.71 points after Friday’s short program, ended up 3.21 ahead of Ignatova with 224.48 total points.
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Chiba won her third consecutive Grand Prix regular season title dating back to 2025. Last season, Chiba followed her Grand Prix success with a fourth-place finish at her first Olympics (1.28 points behind bronze medalist Ami Nakai), then a silver medal at March’s World Championships, one year after taking bronze at worlds.
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“I was really a little bit nervous,” Chiba said moments after her victory, via translator, “but I mentioned my feelings of how much I love figure skating, and that makes me a big emotion to make forward to win again.”
Ignatova is the first mom to make a Grand Prix singles podium and one of the few moms in modern history to compete in top-level international singles skating.
The 2022 Olympic silver medalist had son Mikhail in August 2025 and competed in her first Grand Prix since 2021.
In June, the International Skating Union announced that skaters from Russia and Belarus can return to the Grand Prix in a neutral capacity if they have not supported the war in Ukraine.
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Von Felten, the 2025 U.S. junior champion, placed seventh in her senior Grand Prix debut.
In the free skate, she became the second U.S. woman to land a clean, positively graded triple Axel on the senior Grand Prix Series (since 2004) after Amber Glenn, according to Skatingscores.com. Von Felten landed a negatively graded triple Axel in Friday’s short.
Alysa Liu and Mirai Nagasu also landed positively graded triple Axels outside of senior Grand Prix competition.
Cup of China finishes with the men’s free skate on Sunday at 12 a.m. ET, live on Peacock.
Also Saturday, Brits Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson completed a sweep of the rhythm dance and free dance for back-to-back Grand Prix titles after taking Skate Canada last week. They edged Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin of Georgia by 1.39 points.
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Fear and Gibson, who were third or fourth at the last four worlds and the last four Grand Prix Finals, qualified for their fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final from Dec. 10-13 in Chongqing, China.
The Grand Prix Final takes the top six per discipline over the six-event Grand Prix regular season. Cup of China was the third of six regular season events, followed next week by Saatva Skate America.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
