Olympic champion pairs skaters Sui Wenjing and Han Cong zeroed in on their first title in almost four years by topping the NHK Trophy short program in Osaka on Friday (7 November).
The Chinese couple improved their season-best score from the Cup of China two weeks by two points with a 74.63, holding off Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii of Italy (73.69) and Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko of Hungary (73.04).
All three pairs have a shot of qualifying for the Grand Prix Final in December in Nagoya.
Sui/Han’s last win dates back to Beijing 2022, where they struck gold at their home Games before retiring and returning for the 2025-26 season.
Sui/Han were happy with the improvement they made from the Cup of China where they won bronze but admitted they are still not up to their previous championship standards.
“I’m very happy we could finish our short program – not too good, not too bad,” Sui said. “We still have elements we need to improve and I hope tomorrow we can show our best performance for all the audience here.”
Added Han, “For me, I think this is like the beginning actually. We still feel new and fresh and we’re just getting back into competition.
“We still have a lot of work we need to do improve. We can see the problems we have in this competition.”
The French duo of Camille and Pavel Kovalev withdrew after Camille injured her right shoulder midway through their program.