MOSCOW (AP) Russian teenage skater Adian Pitkeev led in the Rostelecom Cup after a confident and strong short program on Friday.
Chasing his first Grand Prix medal, the 17-year-old Pitkeev nosed out world champion Javier Fernandez of Spain by about 0.5 points.
American Ross Miner was third, 2.2 points behind Pitkeev.
Pitkeev, who finished sixth at his three previous Grand Prix events, opened with a clean quad-triple toe loop combination, but saved two other tough jumps - a triple axel and triple lutz - for the second half of the program.
Fernandez got higher program component scores, but didn't do a quad, and he had balance trouble on the first half of his triple lutz-triple toe combination.
Ice dancing also saw the world champions outpointed, with Canada's Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje ahead of Italians Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte by 1.6 points after the short dance. Russia's Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov were third.
Also, Russia's figure skating federation announced that Olympic champion pairs skaters Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov would not compete in next week's NHK Trophy, the last of the Grand Prix preliminaries, because she has a heel injury.
