ONTARIO, Calif. — Not so long ago, Alissa Czisny would have come undone by a fall early in her program. She often was a mental mess, the exact opposite of her coolly elegant skating.
Those days are gone.
Czisny overcame a spill on the second of her seven triple jumps to edge Italy’s Carolina Kostner by 0.13 points and win the women’s title at Skate America on Sunday.
“It was a bit of a relief to see it was just barely enough,” she said.
Czisny totaled 177.48 points in her first appearance at the event since 2005, when she finished second. She won the short program Saturday by nearly four points over Kostner. Kostner, third last year, took the silver at 177.35.
Three-time world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany rallied to win the pairs title with a solid free program.
Czisny’s medal was the first by a U.S. woman at Skate America in four years.
“It was special for me,” she said. “Guess it was nice to win something other than Skate Canada.”
Viktoria Helgesson of Sweden, fifth after the short, earned the bronze at 145.75. Skating to “Sunset Boulevard,” she fell on a triple lutz, skipped a triple flip and touched a hand down on a triple salchow.
“It’s a really big thing for me,” she said about winning Sweden’s first women’s medal at the event. “I have improved my programs a lot from last season. I think that was what made me come this far.”
Skating last to a dour classical piece, Czisny packed her program with seven triples, which, along with Ksenia Makarova of Russia, was the most of any woman. The American opened with a triple-triple combination before falling on a triple flip.
“That was a bit uncharacteristic of me to miss a jump early, but I had heard Carolina’s score before I went out there and knew I had to fight for everything,” Czisny said.
