NAGANO —

Miki Ando came from behind to win the NHK Trophy and claim her second straight Grand Prix title on Saturday. Ando, winner of the Rostelecom Cup two weeks ago, collected 162.55 points to top the fourth event of the Grand Prix series and earned a berth at December’s Grand Prix Final in Tokyo.
   
Alena Leonova of Russia (160.85) placed second, while Ashley Wagner (155.99) came third. Yukari Nakano was in fourth with a score of 152.35. Earlier, Japan’s Daisuke Takahashi finished fourth in his first Grand Prix event after a lengthy injury layoff in the men’s free skate. Former world champion Brian Joubert of France won the event with 232.70 points. American Johnny Weir (217.70) followed in second, while Michal Brezina (217.48) of the Czech Republic took third.

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5 Comments

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  Pukey2 at 09:38 PM JST - 7th November

  Wasn't exactly a good performance, with some terrible landings.

  And as for the men's, Takahashi was very lucky to get 4th place, falling over several times, and other jumps with some very shaky landings. As usual, when up against the best, all flaws of the Japanese skaters are exposed.

  Watched both the men's and women's event on NHK live. Very very strange - just before the men's medal ceremony, the programme ended. And yet the women's medal ceremony was shown. I didn't get the chance to watch the whole ceremony - can someone tell me whether NHK stopped broadcasting the ceremony after Ando received her medal, or did they actually show all medal winners?

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  Sarge at 09:43 PM JST - 7th November

  "Wasn't exactly a good performance"

  Apparently it was good enough to win the trophy.

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  Pukey2 at 09:53 PM JST - 7th November

  Apparently it was good enough to win the trophy.

  You can win the competition if you fall over 5 times, providing every other skater falls 6 or 7 times.

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  LoveUSA at 08:55 AM JST - 8th November

  Ando looked really very sad and down during the award ceremony, as if she had lost the competition. Her smile was forced and she looked quite disappointed, as if gold is not that important.

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  Hotbox08 at 04:12 PM JST - 8th November

  I've learned that the scoring system in figure skating is strange indeed. It seems that you can get penalized more in the short program, if you mistakenly do a required element twice. For example, you can only complete a double axel once and not twice in the program. Even if you are successful in completing the element, you will still get penalized more, than if you fall on a required element that you attempt. Quite odd.

  Also, even if you don't fall down, but downgrade your maneuver, then you get penalized bigger than if you fell while attempting a difficult maneuver.

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