ST. PAUL, Minn. — Forget the rest of the Americans. Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker want a crack at the world.
The reigning junior world pairs champions showed they’re more than capable of hanging with the big kids, edging former champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin Jr. to win the short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
McLaughlin and Brubaker’s score of 66.54 points put them 1.3 points ahead of Inoue and Baldwin going into the free skate Saturday.
“We don’t go anywhere to skate for second,” Brubaker said.
While most of the top pairs bobbled their way through their programs, McLaughlin and Brubaker shone.
“That was our best short program of the season,” McLaughlin said.
It wasn’t perfect, though. McLaughlin had to put her hand down on their side-by- side triple salchows and their side-by-side combination spin was noticeably out of unison. That left room for another pair to pass them with a clean program, but nobody could manage it.
Inoue and Baldwin didn’t make any mistakes, but their program didn’t have the difficulty expected of the top teams.
Defending champions Brooke Castile and Ben Okolski, who had to sit out the Grand Prix season because she had a series of leg injuries, were third after falling on their side-by-side double axels.
Earlier, in the compulsory ice dance, four-time champs Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto were in first place with 41.86 points after an energetic and entertaining Yankee Polka.
That’s 1.27 points ahead of training partners Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
