Team USA closed out a successful week in Shanghai, China, at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2024 with two bronze medals from Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea in pairs and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko in ice dance.
Coming off their first U.S. Championships pairs title, Kam and O'Shea earned their first Four Continents medal and set an international personal best score in their free skate, earning 126.56 points, as well as their overall score with 187.28 points.
While their short program score of 60.72 put them just outside of the top three in fourth, their free skate performance to music from the Nocturnal Animals soundtrack by Abel Korzeniowski featured two lifts that combined for 17.6 points to boost their score. Despite a fall on their throw triple Salchow, their performance earned the second-best free skate score in the pairs discipline to push them onto the podium.
Teammates Chelsea Liu and Balazs Nagy (175.85 points) and Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez (161.16 points) finished seventh and ninth, respectively.
In ice dance, Carreira and Ponomarenko took home their second career Four Continents medal after earning the bronze at the event in 2022. The duo's rhythm dance to “Whole Lotta Trouble" and "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks set them up for a podium spot after receiving all positive grades of execution and earning 77.42 points, just one point shy of their international best. Their free dance earned 116.67 points to keep their bronze medal position with 194.14 points.
They finished just ahead of U.S. teammates Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, who finished fourth with 193.07 points.
Caroline Green and Michael Parsons claimed sixth overall with 190.53 points.
In the women’s discipline, Ava Ziegler continued her breakout season success, finishing just shy of the podium in fourth. She led the U.S. women and earned a personal best overall score with 201.19 points.
Teammates Elyce Lin-Gracey (173.98 points) and Lindsay Thorngren (162.63 points) finished eighth and 12th, respectively.
In the men's discipline, Andrew Torgashev led the men with 237.20 total points to take eighth. Tomoki Hiwatashi ended the competition in 11th with 217.74 points and Maxim Naumov in 12th with 215.00 points.
For full results, click here.
