(Reuters) – Kaetlyn Osmond dazzled the home crowd to take an emphatic lead after the ladies short program at the Skate Canada International in Regina, Saskatchewan on Friday.
On the men’s side, Japan’s world silver medalist Shoma Uno upstaged Canadian Patrick Chan to lead after the short program.
Less than four months before the Winter Olympics, world silver medalist Osmond delivered a near flawless series of jumps in her performance to ‘Sous le ciel de Paris’ and ‘Milord’.
She executed a triple flip-triple toe combination, a triple Lutz and double Axel to set a new personal best of 76.06 points.
Not that she was completely satisfied.
“There are definitely a few things that I want to improve,” said the 21-year-old from Newfoundland.
“But for today I was happy that I was able to do what I do in practice, which is to focus on each element at a time. I felt confident on the ice and it all went very well today.”
Russians Anna Pogorilaya (69.05) and Maria Sotskova (66.10) are second and third respectively.
Uno, meanwhile, took an even bigger lead than Osmond after landing a pair of quad jumps, a quad-double toeloop combination as well as a triple Axel to rack up 103.62 points, followed by three-times world champion Chan (94.43) and American Jason Brown (90.71).
“I am quite satisfied with how I skated today,” said 19-year-old Uno.
In the ice dancing, Canadian reigning world champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir set a record score of 82.68 points to take the lead after the short dance.
“We had a great a summer and fall training and we were very confident, but to come here and execute is a kind of a different story,” Moir said.
“A great off-season and a great start to the season creates some pressure, so it was nice for us to go out and execute very similar to the way we have been training.”
The event continues with the long program on Saturday.
Skate Canada is the second of six qualifying events for the Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan in December.
(Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)
