Lorraine McNamara and Quinn Carpenter embrace following their free dance at Skate America on Oct. 21, 2018 in Everett, Wash.
Ice dancers Lorraine McNamara and Quinn Carpenter won their first senior grand prix medal Saturday.
Scoring 105.26 points in their free dance, McNamara, 19, and Carpenter, 22, were fourth in the free dance but earned bronze once the scores were combined at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Series stop in Helsinki, Finland. They finished fourth in their season debut in Skate America, the opening event of the Grand Prix Series.
Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin of Russia won the competition with a combined score of 200.09, and Italy’s Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri were second with 196.29. McNamara and Carpenter had a score of 176.66.
McNamara and Carpenter posted the fourth-best score in the free dance, had three Level 4 lifts, and were able to maintain their third-place position after Friday’s short dance.
McNamara and Carpenter won silver earlier this season at the Ondrej Nepela Trophy, a Challenger Series event. Last season, they were fifth at their grand prix debut, Cup of China, and fourth at Four Continents Championships.
Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko finished fifth in their senior grand prix debut with a score of 167.28.
The fourth stop on the Grand Prix series is next week’s NHK Trophy in Hiroshima, Japan.
Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is sports editor of the Cape Cod Times and a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.