American Alysa Liu earned the silver medal at the 2019 Junior Grand Prix Final on Friday at the Torino Palavela. Liu scored 133.46 points in her free skate to earn 204.65 total points.
Liu, who led entering the short program, is the first American to medal in the even since Hannah Miller earned a silver medal in 2012.
“I’m kind of disappointed with how I skated,” Liu said. “I’m relieved that the competition is over, but I wish I had been a little more solid. I just need to keep working on my jumps, skating skills and spins. I always want to do a clean program.”
Russians Kamila Valieva and Daria Usacheva finished first and third, respectively.
In the senior ice dance competition, the Americans are second and third heading into the Saturday’s free dance. Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue are in second place with 82.72 points.
“From a performance standpoint, this is what we’ve been working towards,” Donohue said. “We were able to push through the whole program and not even think about fatigue, but just being committed to the character and being committed to performing with each other. There are still some technical points that we left on the table which is a good thing because being able to skate at that level, we know it’s just going to take narrowing down the small technical things.”
Madison Chock and Evan Bates are just behind in third place after earning 81.67 points in their rhythm dance.
“This is such a prestigious event and it’s wonderful to be here amongst the best in the World,” Bates said. “We’ve had a great season thus far. We got a personal best today in the short. We’ll have to look at the protocol to see how we could get some more points, but overall we’re really happy with how today went.”
In junior ice dance, Avonley Nguyen and Vadym Kolesnik are second after earning 68.72 points in their rhythm dance. The duo is just .04 points behind Maria Kazakova and Georgy Reviya of Georgia.
“We just want to do as well as we can and keep improving,” Nguyen said. “We hope the judges like what they see and those that watch our programs feel something when they watch us.”
The Russian duo of Elizaveta Shanaeva and Devid Naryzhnyy are in third with 66.21 points.
Bradie Tennell is in fourth place after the senior ladies short program. The Illinois native scored 72.20 points on Friday night.
Tennell is the first American lady to appear in the event since 2015, when both Ashley Wagner and Gracie Gold qualified for the event.
“I'm a little bit disappointed in the Lutz combo," Tennell said. "I was too hesitant going into that so that led to the under rotation. Everything else went really well. I had really good energy throughout the program so I’m proud of that.”
Russia holds the top three podium spots after the short program. Alena Kostornaia leads, followed by Alina Zagitova and Anna Shcherbakova.
The competition will conclude on Saturday, Dec. 7.
The Grand Prix Series, now in its 25th season, consists of six international events in a cumulative point-scoring format. Each athlete is eligible to score points in up to two of the six scheduled events. The top six point-earners in each discipline qualified to compete in the event.
The entire senior competition can be seen live, commercial-free and on-demand with the Figure Skating Pass on NBC Sports Gold. Additionally, NBCSN will televise parts of the event on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A full recap show on NBC will air on Dec. 22 from 4-6 p.m. A full television schedule is available here.
