The Grand Prix Final — taking place this week in Grenoble, France — is the most exclusive competition in figure skating and often a preview for the World Championships the following March.
That was the case last year, when three of the four Grand Prix Final winners went on to become world champions three months later.
This fall, all of the reigning world champions — Ilia Malinin, Kaori Sakamoto, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps and Madison Chock and Evan Bates — won nine out of their 10 combined Grand Prix regular season starts. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps then withdrew from the Final on Monday.
Any of the other three world champions could be toppled given how the Grand Prix Series unfolded the last two months. A Grand Prix Final broadcast schedule is here.
Ilia Malinin puts win streak on the line
Men’s singles field (in order of seed): Ilia Malinin (USA), Yuma Kagiyama (JPN), Shun Sato (JPN), Kevin Aymoz (FRA), Daniel Grassl (ITA), Mikhail Shaidorov (KAZ)
What’s at stake: Malinin’s yearlong win streak and clear place atop men’s skating. Malinin, who turned 20 on Monday, hasn’t lost since the November 2023 Grand Prix France. Nobody in this field has beaten him since the March 2022 World Championships, or perhaps better put, since he began his full-time senior international career.
Who can beat Malinin: Kagiyama, the Olympic and world silver medalist. Though Malinin won both of his fall Grand Prix starts without attempting a quadruple Axel, Kagiyama had the second-best total score of the entire Grand Prix Series, sandwiched between Malinin’s two totals.
Kaori Sakamoto’s new challenger: Amber Glenn
Women’s singles field (in order of seed): Kaori Sakamoto (JPN), Amber Glenn (USA), Wakaba Higuchi (JPN), Hana Yoshida (JPN), Mone Chiba (JPN), Rino Matsuike (JPN)
What’s at stake: Sakamoto’s win streak in top-level competition. Since placing fifth at the December 2022 Grand Prix Final, Sakamoto has won her last nine starts combined across the Grand Prix Series, the World Championships and the Japanese Championships. While Sakamoto has lost at lower levels during that span, she has turned into a clutch performer when stakes are highest.
Who can beat Sakamoto: Glenn already did at a lower-level, season-opening event in September. Then on the Grand Prix Series, Sakamoto’s average score was just 3.555 points greater than Glenn’s average in her two events. Glenn also has the higher potential score technically given her triple Axel.
Glenn began 2024 with one career senior title: the 2018 U.S. Midwestern Sectionals. So far this year, she won her first senior U.S. title (in her ninth try) and won her first three international titles on any level. A strong performance at the Grand Prix Final — medal or no medal — would be a fitting cap to a breakthrough year.
Pairs: An opening with top seed absent
Pairs’ field (in order of seed): Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN), Minerva Fabienne Hase/Nikita Volodin (GER), Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii (ITA), Anastasiia Metelkina/Luka Berulava (GEO), Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (USA), Rebecca Ghilardi/Filippo Ambrosini (ITA)
What’s at stake: Favorite status for March’s worlds. The absent Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, last season’s world champions, were the top seeds as the lone pair to win both of their Grand Prix starts. But both Miura and Kihara (2023 World champions) and Hase and Volodin (2023 Grand Prix Final champions) had higher scores than the Canadians in their Grand Prix starts.
If either can score even higher at the Final — perhaps approach Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps’ 221.56 from March’s worlds — then they will make a strong case to be the globe’s top pair.
Ice Dance: Chock, Bates in tight race to repeat
Ice dance field (in order of seed): Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson (GBR), Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA), Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (CAN), Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri (ITA), Evgenia Lopareva/Geoffrey Brissaud (FRA), Marjorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha (CAN)
What’s at stake: Chock and Bates’ dominance. The Americans won eight competitions in a row from the start of 2023 through the 2024 World Championships. Then they counted a fall in their first competitive program of this season in the Skate America rhythm dance. Though they won the free dance, they couldn’t make up the deficit to Fear and Gibson.
Chock and Bates rebounded to win NHK Trophy in November with the world’s top total score this season. Guignard and Fabbri and Gilles and Poirier’s best scores are within 1.11 points of that. Last year, Chock and Bates went into the Final ranked fourth in the field by best score to that point in the season, then won by 6.1 points.
