Skate America 2018: Ladies and Dance Predictions

Now let’s move to the LADIES (starts at 10:19 PM Eastern Time Saturday):

Gold: Satoko Miyahara (JPN)

Silver: Sofia Samodurova (RUS)

Bronze: Bradie Tennell (USA)

This is a field of 11, not 12, as Russia’s Elena Radionova scratched earlier this week with a back injury and was not replaced. That means the Russian contingency consists of 16 year-old Samodurova—new to the senior GP, but 2^nd place winner at Lombardia Trophy recently—and 17 year-old Polina Tsurskaya, who showed promise in last year’s GP but only finished 5^th at Russian Nationals (missing the Olympic team). I expect Samodurova to make a splash here, but if Miyahara can fully rotate her jumps—particularly the triple lutz, which she’s reportedly been UR’ing in SkAM practices—then I think she can “complete package” her way to 1^st place here.

The U.S. ladies field may be surprisingly obscure at this year’s SkAM (aside from reigning champ Bradie Tennell of course), but remember that both Ashley Wagner and Mirai Nagasu are taking the “break” that you’d expect veterans like them to take once their second Olympic run was over and they weren’t quite ready to call it a career just yet. This sends other potential headliners such as Karen Chen and Mariah Bell to later GP events, although Chen just scratched from her first event (GP Finland) due to injury… in any case, USFS chose Starr Andrews (6^th at Nationals) and Megan Wessenberg (17^th at Nats) to represent, so it’ll be interesting to see how each responds to their own particular sphere of pressure. As for Tennell, who beat out Evgenia Medvedeva (!) for gold at the Autumn Classic earlier this season, I think she’d do well to duplicate her SkAM results from last year.

Eyes on: Loena Hendrickx of Belgium… not only because she’s an up-and-comer (5^th last Euros, 9^th last Worlds, 3^rd at Nebelhorn, but because when I tried to watch her Nebelhorn FS on YouTube, it was audioblocked :( … seeing it live might be the only way!

And finally, ICE DANCE (starting at 12:19 AM Eastern Time Sunday):

Gold- Hubbell/Donohue (USA)

Silver Guignard/Fabbri (ITA)

Bronze Zagorski/Guerreiro (RUS)

I went mostly by worlds standings for this; with H/D the only ones in this field to medal last spring, they’re the clear favorite here. Both the Italian and Russian teams were further down the pecking order— Zag/Guer was 8^th ; G/F 9^th – but I’m putting the Italians ahead based on their 1^st place at Lombardia Trophy.

Eyes on: McNamara/Carpenter is the one Americans are likely to pay the most attention to, as they turned in a 5^th place GP finish last year and are one of the teams gunning for the vacancy left by the currently-hiatusing Shibutanis. But my attention will be on a new-to-the-GP British team of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, whose Free Dance is an infectious mix of Rose Royce, Donna Summer, Earth Wind & Fire, and Michael Jackson. They’re likely to skate early, but try to catch it—unless you despise disco, that is…