At Sketa Canada 2023, no one could come close to Ilia Malinin's result.

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The second stage of the international Grand Prix series Skate Canada has come to an end in Vancouver. In America, the singles skaters set a very high bar, the winner of the stage – Ilya Malinin – received more than 300 points for two skates. The competitors failed to repeat the American’s success or even come close to his result.
Japan’s Sota Yamamoto became the winner of Skate Canada. He took first place in the short program with a slight advantage, which kept him in the lead. His result is modest by today’s standards – 89.56 points. His performance was far from ideal – touching the ice with his hand after performing a quadruple salchow and losing levels on a combined rotation. The single skater got good points for the quadruple tulup – triple tulup cascade and solo triple axel.
In the free program he failed to cope only with the trixel – Sota fell from one and landed the second one in a step-out, which caused a repeat of the element and the loss of the cascade. But three quadruples were performed perfectly: a salchow and two tulups, one in a cascade with a triple tulup. As a result, 168.86 for rolling and only 258.42 in total. Yamamoto’s programs are fairly simple – Chameleon Jazz and the third part of Exogenesis. The music is well chosen, the Japanese feel it, can convey it, but all the choreography is secondary and too simple. There is absolutely no individuality in it, these productions can be easily transferred to any other singles.

In second place was Kao Miura. After the short program he was only in fourth place (80.80 points). The skater failed to perform a quadruple tulup – a “butterfly” happened, because of which he twisted only two turns. The Japanese won the free program by performing a clean quadruple tulup, quadruple salchow and a cascade of quadruple and triple tulups. There were still some mistakes, the worst of which was a fall from a triple axel. Kao received 177.09 points for his rolling on the second day of the competition and 257.89 in total.
He has an interesting choice of compositions for his performances: neoclassical in the short and the soundtrack to the anime “Attack of the Titans” in the free skate. In fact, the Japanese athlete seems to have no programs at all: he just skates from element to element, makes only a couple of movements, and does little work with his body and arms. It can be seen that the athlete hears the music, but he doesn’t show it in his skating.

In third place is the Italian Matteo Rizzo. According to the results of the short program he was only in eighth place because of inaccuracies and small errors. The cascade of quadruple tulup – triple tulup was a bit crooked, and the quadruple rittberger single landed in a step-out with touching the ice. He has a very colorful and unusual production to the popular song “Derniere danse”. Matteo skates to original female vocals, which is rare for men. Throughout the program qualitatively distributed choreography, some small chips that accurately and clearly complement the existing image. For rolling the Italian received 74.99 points.
In free skating he performed to the song “Fix You” by Coldplay. This can be called another successful performance – with a lot of choreography, transitions and new steps. Rizzo had only two quadruple jumps – a touloupe and a rittberger – and a step-out on his solo triple axel. Even so, he scored second in the free skate – 171.02 points – and climbed to a final third place (246.01).

Silver medalist Cha Jung-hwan of Korea remained only in ninth place in the end. He fell in the short program with a solo quadruple tulup, but managed to stay in the top three. In the short program, the singles player completely ruined – he fell from a quadruple salchow and quadruple tulup, both step-out trixels and a butterfly on the second jump in the Lutz-Rittberger cascade. What’s going on with Cha? Perhaps it’s the final breakup with Brian Orser that has affected him so much. With Heung Joon Chi, he’s been working with him for a while. But now it’s all broken up. He’s just stripped down to the last cell. It’s going to be hard to get back to top form. And he’s already past the Grand Prix final.

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