Shibutani siblings lead at Four Continents Figure Skating Championships
BySportsbeat
Published 18/02/2016 at 18:52 GMT
The 2016 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships opened in exciting fashion in Chinese Taipei on Thursday as the USA's Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani edged out Canada's Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje for a narrow lead in the short dance.
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
Dancing to Waltz and March from 'Coppelia' by Leo Delibes, the ice dance brother and sister team set a new personal best score of 72.86 points.
That was enough to edge out Weaver and Poje who posted 72.42 while the USA's Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue are third on 69.36.
"That was our strongest performance of the season so far for our short dance," said Maia, who will look to wrap up the ice dance title alongside her brother on Friday.
"After the national championships we all had a few weeks, but we really put in some focus time to improve various parts of our program. So we're really happy with how it went today."
In the ladies short program, Japan's Satoko Miyahara skated into the lead at the halfway point, with a triple Lutz-triple toeloop combination, a triple flip, and double Axel all helping her to 72.48 points.
Fellow Japanese skater Kanako Murakami is second on 68.51 while the USA's Mirai Nagasu is third on 66.06.
While in the pairs short program, China's Wenjing Sui and Cong Han took top spot ahead of Canada's Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford and the USA's Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim after scoring 78.51.
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