Chan sits in fifth at Trophée Bompard
BORDEAUX, FRANCE— Toronto’s Patrick Chan is fifth at the Trophée Bompard after scoring a 76.10 on Friday in the men’s short program.
Japan’s Shoma Uno sits first with 89.56 points, followed by Russia’s Maxim Kovtun (86.82) and Japan’s Daisuke Murakami (80.24).
“Had a lot of good things, successful, here that I had challenges with at Skate Canada,” said Chan, referring to the previous stop on the Grand Prix of Figure Skating circuit where he won gold. “Might’ve, going in to the first toe, I think I was thinking of the Axel and the Lutz, since I had missed it at Skate Canada.
“I was not really thinking about what I was doing.”
Trophée Bompard has been one of Chan’s strongest Grand Prix of Figure Skating stops throughout his career. The three-time figure skating world champion recorded his personal best scores in the short program and free skate at the 2013 event, setting the world record for free skate and combined total that year.
American Gracie Gold took the lead in the women’s competition, scoring a personal best 73.32 points in an almost flawless short program to the popular tango song “El Choclo.”
Gold improved her previous best by 2.06 points to build a comfortable lead of 7.69 points over Russian Julia Lipnitskaia heading into the free skating.
Gabrielle Daleman of Newmarket, Ont., was sixth with 55.35 points.
Wearing an elegant black dress with a red lining, the 20-year-old Gold landed a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination at the Meriadeck ice rink.
Gold is looking for another podium finish after her second place at Skate America last month in the sevenevent Grand Prix series.
Italian Roberta Rodeghiero was third with 58.81 points while world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva scored 56.21 for fifth place.