COLUMBUS – Ilia Malinin landed the quad axel, a jump only he has ever landed in competition, while winning his second consecutive U.S. figure skating championship.
Malinin finished with 294.35 points, well below the world-leading score of 314.66 points he had at the Grand Prix Final in December.
But it was well ahead of Jason Brown in second with 264.50 points, while Camden Pulkinen soared from fifth after his short program into the bronze-medal position with 262.33 points.
Amber Glenn won her first U.S. figure skating title on Friday night when defending champion Isabeau Levito fell three times during her own free skate.
That dropped the 16-year-old all the way to third place and allowed Glenn to win the gold medal after mistakes in her own program.
Glenn finished with a score of 210.46, while Josephine Lee jumped into second place and Levito was third.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their fifth U.S. figure skating title in the ice dance despite an illness that began to set in two days earlier.
Chock and Bates scored 215.92 points after their free skate to easily outpace Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko for their third consecutive gold medal.
In the pairs competition, Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea edged Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov for the gold medal.
Kam and O’Shea struggled on both of their throw elements and finished with 187.86 points, while Efimova and Mitrofanov jumped from fifth after their short program to second with the highest-scoring free skate and wound up with 186.91 points.
World championships team announced
U.S. Figure Skating announced later Sunday that Malinin, Brown and Pulkinen would be on the team it sends to worlds, while the duos of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe, national champs Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, and Valentina Plazas and Maximiliano Fernandez would take part in the pairs event.