Challenger Series 2024-25: Lombardia Trophy and Nebelhorn Trophy

After an unplanned summer break, Scoreography returns to cover the 2024-2025 season, starting with the Challenger Series. We take a look at all the major competitors we’ve seen so far, specifically from the Nebelhorn and Lombardia Trophy competitions, as well as Cranberry Cup and other small events.

Welcome back, Scoreogra-fans! (too much?)

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new SEASON of figure skating — and we’re so happy to be back! It was a long summer of far too much adult-ing, and we’ve missed so much in the world of figure skating. From the ISU’s legalization of the backflip (or somersault) in competition to the 2022 Olympic teams from the USA and Japan FINALLY getting their medals at the 2024 games in Paris, we’re definitely a bit behind.

However, with a new competitive season already in progress, we’re moving forward and talking about what we’ve already seen at early season Challenger Series events including Lombardia Trophy, Nebelhorn Trophy, and Cranberry Cup. Since its still quite early and most skater’s programs aren’t fully “baked” yet, in this episode we break down which skaters have competed so far by discipline — and dig into who’s already looking strong.

Women’s Division

The women of Team USA have come out hot already with some big moments for reigning U.S. Champion, Amber Glenn, and well as two young skaters who are starting to make their mark internationally: Elyce Lin-Gracey and Sarah Everhardt. Amber threw down a personal best short program at Lombardia Trophy — which included a gorgeous triple axel — and skated well enough in the free to earn her first gold at a Challenger Series event.

Elyse Lin-Gracey was consistently gaining ground last season, but she looks like she’s found her flow and looked incredible at Nebelhorn Trophy. She scored a personal best of 213.33 overall and made the skating world sit up and take notice. Also bringing the heat is Sarah Everhart, who looked fantastic at last year’s U.S. Nationals where she landed in 4th overall. She started her season with a victory at Cranberry Cup over the likes of reigning World Silver medalist, Isabeau Levito and Elyse Lin-Gracey.

Isabeau Levito, for her part, has perhaps not had the flawless programs and scores she would have liked so far — with a bronze at Cranberry Cup and a silver at Nebelhorn Trophy. However, we are not too concerned, as she’s already shown a new short program that taps into an elegant, Audrey Hepburn vibe that looks like a winner to us. Plus, her free skate at Nebelhorn showed significant improvement from Cranberry Cup. We think these are just early competitions and that she looks to be right on track.

Team Japan is already on the board with medals as well, with reigning 3-time world champion, Kaori Sakamoto, taking the bronze at Lombardia Trophy with a safe but solid competition. Again, her programs look stellar and we’re chalking up the lower-than-usual difficulty and scores to the fact that it’s a brand new season. At Nebelhorn Trophy, we saw her Japanese teammate and last season’s rookie of the year, Hana Yoshida, take bronze and include triple axels in both her short and long programs. The short program saw a fall on that triple axel, but she scored a nice one in her excellent free skate.

Pairs Division

Nebelhorn Trophy provided us a fantastic early-season rematch between two of last season’s top teams: World Champions Deanna Stelatto-Dudek & Maxime Deschamps and World Bronze medalists, Minerva Hase & Nikita Volodin. Canada’s Deanna & Maxime had a great new short program, but drew the short straw, going first at the competition, so were scored lower than they would have been had they skated later. Their new free skate has incredible potential to be one of their best, but a few issues on their side-by-side jumps held them solidly in the silver medal position.

Germany’s Hase & Volodin looked nearly ready for Worlds in terms of their technical. After having to make some relatively last-minute changes to their music in the offseason, they looked poised and polished — claiming their first victory of this new season. If this represents the promise of what’s to come, they will make it an exciting Grand Prix series and beyond.

Also looking strong already are Sarah Conti & Niccolo Macii from Italy, who took the gold at Lombardia Trophy with two much better skates than most of what we saw from them last season. It was great to see a solid comeback for this team — and will hopefully lead to more positive outcomes.

Reigning world silver medalists, Japan’s Riku Miura & Ryuchi Kihara, had a stunning short program at Lombardia Trophy. However, their new long program—while looking like it has the potential to be a gem—saw a scary fall in a lift resulting in what appeared to be at least a minor injury for Ryuchi. Their coach, Bruno Marcotte, later said Ryuchi would recover in a week or two and that no major damage was done, thankfully.

Also looking strong so far are Hungary’s Maria Pavlova & Alexei Sviatchenko, who were third at Lombardia Trophy, and the U.S.’s Ellie Kam & Danny O’Shea, who had a stunning personal best short program at Nebelhorn Trophy and earned the bronze medal there.

Men’s Division

We were NOT prepared for the Lombardia Trophy rematch of the two top men in the world from last season, Ilia Malinin and Yuma Kagiyama. In what had to be the most exciting moments of the season so far, these two men lit up the arena in Italy — showing programs that look both like they have tons of room to improve and also like they’ve been skating them for years.

Reigning world champ and quad god, Ilia Malinin, has brought some of his exhibition style to his short program with an aggressive music choice and program. His free skate to “I’m Not a Vampire” may be his strongest yet. He did not perform the quad axel here or push to the limits he can on the technical side, but his victory was marked instead by more intensity and connection to the music than we’ve seen from him before. He’s showing growth, and it’s exciting to see.

Yuma Kagiyama brought his finesse, his edges, his jumps, and his completeness as a skater to Lomabardia and looked absolutely divine as he took silver. As he did last season, his difficulty was somewhat dialed down here (its early season!), but that did not take away from the quality of his programs. In particular, his short program is a masterpiece that — once at its full power — will have audiences in the palm of his hand even more than they already are. A joy!

Not too far behind the two of these men was Japan’s Shun Sato, who looked better than ever after an off season where he obviously spent time working on his choreography and connection to the music. Worth noting is his score of 285.88, which got him a bronze here but would have taken gold over his countryman, Sota Yamamoto, at Nebelhorn Trophy.

Yamamoto had a rough short program at Nebelhorn, but his exceptional free skate took him to victory. Right behind his was a strong performance from Gabriele Frangipani from Italy and an artistic dream from Deniss Vasiļjevs of Latvia.

Ice Dance Division

Of all the disciplines so far, we’ve seen the fewest of the top contenders in dance. Reigning world bronze medalists, Guignard & Fabbri of Italy, did make their debut with a fresh and fun rhythm dance. Their free skate seemed a bit less successful, but their scores were still magnificent and took them to an easy gold medal at Lombardia Trophy.

The team nipping at their heels all last season, Lilah Fear & Lewis Gibson of Great Britain, looked amazing in their disco-themed rhythm dance. However, their free dance to a Beyonce medley seemed a little more safe than we’ve seen from them in past seasons. Still, their scores easily took them to victory at Nebelhorn Trophy and sets them up well as the season evolves.

Our personal favorites so far this season have to be the two American teams of Christina Carreira & Anthony Ponomarenko, whose free dance to Carmen may well be their best to date, and Emilea Zingas & Vadym Kolesnik. Zingas & Kolesnik looked like a different team in their free dance, showing a new and captivating side to their skating.

Chapters

0:00 — Intro
3:43 — Women’s Division
3:58 — Amber Glenn
5:15 — Elyce Lin-Gracey
6:51 — Sarah Everhardt
9:29 — Isabeau Levito
12:25 — Kaori Sakamoto
14:49 — Hana Yoshida
16:12 — Mona Chiba
16:43 — Anastasia Gubanova
16:49 — Kimmy Repond
17:01 — Sarah-Maude Dupuis
17:52 — Yuna Aoki and Mai Mihara
18:58 — Women we haven’t seen yet
20:00 — Pairs Division
20:30 — Hase and Volodin
21:29 — Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps
23:57 — Conti and Macii
25:08 — Miura and Kihara
28:14 — Pavlova and Sviatchenko
29:21 — Kam and O’Shea
31:22 — Efimova and Mitrofanov
32:33 — Pairs we haven’t seen
33:10 — Shin and Nagy
34:11 — Men’s Division
34:41 — Ilia Malinin
37:18 — Yuma Kagiyama
39:09 — Shun Sato
41:17 — Sota Yamamoto
43:24 — Junhwan Cha
44:55 — Kao Muira
46:14 — Gabriele Frangipani
46:52 — Deniss Vasiļjevs
47:51 — Roman Sadovsky
49:34 — Jimmy Ma
49:57 — Lucas Broussard
50:09 — Men we haven’t seen
52:23 — Ice Dance Division
53:45 — Guignard and Fabri
56:10 — Fear and Gibson
58:34 — Carreira and Ponomarenko
59:54 — Zingas and Kolesnik
1:01:30 — Taschlerova and Taschler
1:02:06 — Smart and Dieck
1:04:46 — Marosov and Chen
1:06:28 — Neset and Markolov
1:08:18 — Lerault and LeGac
1:08:57 — Brown and Brown
1:09:41 — Pate and Bye
1:09:51 — Flores and Destoyav
1:10:46 — Teams we haven’t seen yet
1:12:01 — Gold in our Hearts
1:13:58 — Wrap-Up