American figure skater Levito lands first Grand Prix win in France
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ANGERS, France (AP) — Isabeau Levito's quest for a first Grand Prix victory is over.
The 16-year-old American figure skater won the Grand Prix de France on Saturday with a total of 203.22 points for her two programs.
Levito, who had built a big lead of more than five points after Friday's short program, was less impressive in the free skate and had to be content with the third best total.
Skating on her program“The White Crow,” Levito landed a triple Lutz-triple toe and four other triple jumps but stumbled on her last spin.
Her performance was still good enough to prevail as Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia and Lee Hae-in of South Korea — who were second and third after the short program — also struggled in their free skate.
Levito beat Nina Pinzarrone of Belgium by a comfortable margin of 4.42 points. Rion Sumiyoshi of Japan ended third.
"I guess we’ll call this screwing up the second half of my spin a dramatic finish,” Levito said. “I’m just glad that I did the first half very nicely. 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.”
Levito had previously claimed four runner-up finishes at other Grand Prix events, including at Skate America last month.
With her victory, Levito qualified for the Grand Prix Final in Beijing from Dec. 7-10. The Grand Prix de France was the third of six events in the ISU Grand Prix series
“I’m very proud I was able to improve from last season's result on the Grand Prix circuit," Levito said. “It was my goal to win one of my Grands Prix at least, to secure that I would make it to the Final.”
Sumiyoshi won the free skate with a personal best score of 136.04 points.
“Today I fixed the problems I had yesterday and performed as I wanted,” said Sumiyoshi, who landed a clean quadruple toe-loop. "I’m trying to make it more consistent so that it will be my weapon to win competitions.”
Ilia Malinin, another American skater, led the field in the men's competition ahead of Saturday's free skate.
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