TURIN, Italy -- The pair of Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara etched their names into Japanese figure skating history on Friday when they became the nation's first-ever winners of the pairs title at the ISU Grand Prix Finals, taking the gold in their first appearance at the season-ending event.
Miura and Kihara, the leaders after the short program, also had the top score in the free skate, giving them a total of 214.58 points and a razor-thin 1.30-point win over the world champion pair of Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier of the United States.
"I'm so happy that we have opened up a new door," Kihara, 30, said.
When their scores appeared on the scoreboard, the two both broke out in tears. As the leaders after the short program, they skated last in the free skate -- a situation they had never before faced.
"It was the first time we had been under such pressure as a pair," Kihara said.
Their victory was tempered by the fact that the strongest pairs from Russia and China were not present. "I'm happy winning the title for the first time, but this was not our best performance," Kihara said. "We can never forget the feeling of being the challenger."
The gold medal performance by the pair was not so surprising, given the progress they have made since first pairing up in 2019.
They placed seventh at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February this year, marking the highest-ever finish at an Olympics by a Japanese pair, then became Japan's first-ever world medalists in the pairs event when they won the silver in March in Montpellier, France.
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