Canada's Pereira, Michaud win 1st career Grand Prix title with pairs gold in France
Fournier Beaudry, Soerensen grab ice dance silver for Canada
Canadian figure skaters added more hardware at the Grand Prix de France on Saturday, with Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud winning pairs gold.
The duo, which joined forces last season, won their first career Grand Prix title with 194.67 points after finishing first in both the short and free programs in Angers.
Italy's Sara Conti and Niccolo Macci finished 5.21 points behind for silver, while the French duo of Camille and Pavel Kovalev claimed bronze (172.88).
Pereira, 19, of Milton, Ont., and Michaud, 27, of Belleville, Ont., were coming off a silver-medal performance in their first Grand Prix of the season at Skate America.
They set the pace in the short program on Friday, scoring 65.97 points to edge out the Italians (65.31).
Fellow Canadians Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen secured silver in the ice dance event earlier on Saturday.
After finishing second to the Italian pair of Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri in Friday's rhythm dance, the Montreal duo did the same a day later in the ice dance free program for a total score of 205.15 across two events.
Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen's score of 124.17 on Saturday closed the gap on Guignard and Fabbri, but it wasn't enough after the Italians surpassed them with 127.92 to take gold with a score of 214.54.
France's Evgenia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud earned bronze with 190.82 points.
The Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Que., duo of Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac finished fifth (182.61).
Later Saturday, Lia Pereira of Milton, Ont., and Trennt Michaud of Brantford, Ont., will take the lead into the pairs free program.
Levito earns 1st Grand Prix victory
Isabeau Levito's quest for a first Grand Prix victory is over.
The 16-year-old American figure skater won Saturday with a total of 203.22 points for her two programs.
Levito, who had built a big lead of more than five points after Friday's short program, was less impressive in the free skate and had to be content with the third best total.
Skating on her program The White Crow, Levito landed a triple Lutz-triple toe and four other triple jumps but stumbled on her last spin.
Her performance was still good enough to prevail as Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia and Lee Hae-in of South Korea — who were second and third after the short program — also struggled in their free skate.
Levito beat Nina Pinzarrone of Belgium by a comfortable margin of 4.42 points. Rion Sumiyoshi of Japan ended third.
"I guess we'll call this screwing up the second half of my spin a dramatic finish," Levito said. "I'm just glad that I did the first half very nicely. I'm glad I got through this and I will definitely be working on this [second half of the program] a lot more once I get back to training."
Levito had previously claimed four runner-up finishes at other Grand Prix events, including at Skate America last month.
With her victory, Levito qualified for the Grand Prix Final in Beijing from Dec. 7-10. The Grand Prix de France was the third of six events in the ISU Grand Prix series.
Sumiyoshi won the free skate with a personal best score of 136.04 points.
"Today I fixed the problems I had yesterday and performed as I wanted," said Sumiyoshi, who landed a clean quadruple toe-loop. "I'm trying to make it more consistent so that it will be my weapon to win competitions."
Later, Malinin scored 101.58 points to top the men's short program ahead of Adam Siao Him Fa of France and Yuma Kagiyama of Japan. Malinin, the Skate America champion, has a very slim lead of 0.51 points.
Olympic silver medalist Kagiyama is taking part in his first Grand Prix in two years after recovering from an ankle injury.
Malinin produced a quad toe, triple axel and quad lutz-triple toe but fell during a step sequence.
"There's a couple of small mistakes, but it happens. I was just too excited from what I did, and I just got a little bit ahead of myself," he said. "It taught me that sometimes you just have to still be focused until the end of the program."
Siao Him Fa landed a quad lutz, triple axel, as well as a quad toe-triple toe combination for a new personal best score of 101.07 points. "Today was really fun to skate," he said. "It was really stressful, because I was skating in my hometown, and it was a pleasure to skate here in France."
With files from CBC Sports
