Ilia Malinin successfully completed a quad axel while becoming the youngest men’s champion in Skate America history.
American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates along with Japan's Kaori Sakamoto, the women's world champion, took the lead after their opening performances. The medals for those events will be decided Sunday.
In the pairs event, Knierim and Frazier opened well with their signature triple twist, and their landed a clean triple toe loop-double toe loop combination. But things got a little squirrely when Knierim fell on their throw triple loop, and a side-by-side triple salchow turned into a double salchow, dragging down the base value of their program.
Chock and Bates, who finished in fourth at the Beijing Olympics, scored 82.63 points for their rhumba, despite a couple of mistakes in the program. They struggled through their rotational lift and Bates made a bobble on his twizzle.