Isabeau Levito ends US women’s drought with figure skating gold at Grand Prix de France

Isabeau Levito ended the USA’s wait for a landmark win in women’s figure skating with an unlikely gold at the Grand Prix de France.

The 16-year-old stumbled on the final spin of her free skate but still took a maiden Grand Prix gold by a margin of 4.42 points.

“I guess we’ll call this screwing up the second half of my spin a dramatic finish. I’m just glad that I did the first half very nicely,” said Levito.

“I’m glad I got through this, and I will definitely be working on this (second half of the program) a lot more once I get back to training.

“I’m very proud that I was able to improve from last season’s result on the Grand Prix circuit. It was my goal to win one of my Grand Prix at least.”

Levito’s strong short program paid dividends as a chaotic competition saw Belgium’s Nina Pinzarrone rise from fourth to take silver and bronze went to Japan’s Rion Sumiyoshi.

There was a popular success for Bordeaux-born Adam Siao Him Fa who won gold in the men’s singles.

The 22-year-old overhauled American prodigy Ilia Malinin’s slender lead from the short program with a fine free skate to take top step on home ice.

The ice dance podium was exactly the same as a year ago in Angers.

Italy’s Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri racked up a combined 214.54 points to take their third Grand Prix gold in some style, with Canada’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen winning silver and Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud of France the bronze.

“It is great (to win in France again) and most of all we feel very happy about our performances because we felt that we improved a lot of things compared to our last competition,” said Fabbri.

“We felt from the first practice really at ease on the ice.”