Hosts People’s Republic of China grabbed the first Olympic quotas on offer at the 2025 ISU Skate to Milano Figure Skating Qualifier on Saturday, 20 September as Zhang Jiaxuan/Huang Yihang topped the rankings following the pairs free skate.
Armenia and Japan grabbed the other two quotas for the Milano Cortina 2026 in the pairs event.
The Chinese figure skating pair led by 2.4 points after the short program and increased that lead to 4.68 points after a strong free skate set to Coldplay’s “O”. Zhang and Huang got points deducted for their opening jump sequence and a fall on a triple Salchow, but otherwise delivered a clean program.
Armenia’s Karina Akopova/Nikita Rakhmanin jumped from third place to second after the free program set to music from “Slumdog Millionaire”. Akopova burst into tears on the ice after the clean skate, which earned the pair 122.99 points and bumped them up to 186.84 points in total.
The biggest drama of the afternoon was played out for the third quota spot. Japan’s Nagaoka Yuna/Moriguchi Sumitada were sitting in fourth place after the short program and mistakes on their twists, jump sequence and throws seemed to spell the end of their Olympic dreams.
When the Armenians overtook them in the rankings, the Japanese pair paced anxiously behind the scenes, watching the performance of short program runners-up France’s Camille and Pavel Kovalev.
But the door opened for them when Camille Kovalev stumbled on a triple toe loop and once the scores came in, confirming that the Japanese pair were ahead, Nagaoka and Moriguchi burst into tears.
More to follow…