Estonia's Niina Petrõkina wins ISU Challenger event in Bergamo

Estonian figure skater Niina Petrõkina claimed her first official title of the new season, winning the ISU Challenger series event, the Lombardia Trophy, held in Bergamo, Italy.

A week earlier, at the Haabersti ice hall in Tallinn, Estonia's top skaters had tested their new season programs at the Tallinn Open. There, two-time European champion Petrõkina scored 72.67 points in her short program, a new personal best at the time. However, that result did not count officially since the Tallinn event was not part of the International Skating Union (ISU) calendar.

New record in Bergamo

The Lombardia Trophy marked her first official start of the season, and Petrõkina delivered her new short program impressively, scoring 77.20 points — nearly seven points above her previous personal best, which had been set at her title-winning European Championships.

She did not win the free skate on Saturday, however: South Korean skater Shin Ji-a performed her technical elements slightly more cleanly and edged out Petrõkina by one point in that segment. Still, Petrõkina's combined score across both programs, 210.41 points (her personal best stands at 216.14), was the highest overall, making her the women's champion of the Lombardia Trophy. Shin took second place with 209.26 points, while Italy's Lara Naki Gutmann finished third with 202.74.

Another Estonian competitor, Maria Eliise Kaljuvere, stood in fourth place after the short program with a new personal best of 63.52 points, but a less successful free skate on Saturday dropped her to ninth overall with 157.84 points.

In the men's competition, Estonia's Mihhail Selevko leads after the short program with a personal-best score of 91.09 points. This season he began training under coach Svetlana Varnavskaya. The men's free skate will take place on Sunday.