Montreal's Fournier Beaudry, Sorensen earn ice dance bronze for 4th medal in 4 events

Montreal's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sorensen finished the Rostelecom Cup with a fourth medal in as many figure skating competitions this season.

The veteran ice dancers earned 191.40 points for bronze at the sixth stop on the ISU circuit on Saturday in Sochi, Russia.

Hometown favourites Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov won the with 211.72 points, followed by Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri of Italy with 203.71.

The Canadians were also third at their previous Grand Prix assignment at Skate America last month after winning silver at two ISU Challenger Series events.

"We feel we've been improving from competition to competition," Fournier Beaudry told reporters. "We've still got little things to work on, but we are happy with the progression. We had five weeks between Grand Prix so that's been a good measuring stick for us.''

WATCH l Fournier Beaudry, Sorensen reach podium at Rostelecom Cup:

Roman Sadovsky of Vaughan, Ont., delivered a clean skate and his best performance of the season in the men's competition, falling just short of the medal podium in fourth with 253.80 points.

The 22-year-old had slight turns on his opening quad Salchow and triple Axel landings but would later comeback to land a clean quad Salchow in combination with a triple Salchow.

'A huge step for me'

"To beat my season's best by 30 points is a huge step for me,'' said Sadovsky, the 2020 Canadian champion. "That was more or less what I wanted to do. I wanted to reflect the changes made since my last competition. I'm just going to keep going from here and keep training."

Morisi Kvitelashvili posted 266.33 points become the first Georgian to win a figure skating Grand Prix, with Mikhail Kolyada of Russia (264.64) and Japan's Kazuki Tomono (264.19) rounding out the podium.

Kvitelashvili represents Georgia but was born in Moscow and trains there with coach Eteri Tutberidze, the coach behind many of Russia's Olympic and world championship-winning women's skaters over the last decade, including Valieva.

Tomono was the leader from the short program and, skating last to music from the movie La La Land, was clean on two of his three quadruple jumps but fell on a triple axel. That helped to ensure he couldn't overtake Kvitelashvili, who overcame his own fall on a quad toe loop in his program to a Frank Sinatra medley.

WATCH l Sinitsina, Katsalapov rack up 211.72 points for ice dance win:

Kolyada had the best free skate score with 180.16 as he rose from fourth in the short program to second and secured a spot at next month's Grand Prix Final in Japan.

Elsewhere, Kamila Valieva headed a Russian women's podium sweep to underline her status as favourite for Olympic gold medal in Beijing in February.

The 15-year-old landed three quadruple jumps, two of them in combinations, to Ravel's "Bolero" and scored 185.29 points in the free skate for a 272.71 total. Her short program, free skate and overall scores at the competition were all world records.

Erratic short program

Valieva won by a crushing margin of 43 points from Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, the 2015 world champion who doesn't perform quad jumps but has stayed in contention with triple-triple combinations and strong presentation skills.

Tuktamysheva scored 229.23 to stay ahead of fellow Russian Maiia Khromykh, who had two quad jumps, stepping out on the landing of one of them. Khromykh scored 219.69 to recover from an erratic short program and take the final podium spot ahead of Mariah Bell of the United States.

Madeline Schizas of Oakville, Ont., was sixth with a season's best 192.14.

"My free skate wasn't exactly what I was hoping," said Schizas, fourth after the short program. "I was happy with the fight I showed through the program. I've been really motivated this season by the quality of skating I've seen at the senior level."

Russia swept the podium in pairs as world champions Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov dominated the free skate after second place in the short program, to win with an overall 226.98 points.

Daria Pavliuchenko and Denis Khodykin were second on 212.59 and Iasmina Kadyrova and Ivan Balchenko took third on 193.58.

Kirsten Moore-Towers of St. Catharines, Ont., and Michael Marinaro of Sarnia, Ont., improved from seventh after the short program to fifth with the fifth best free skate.

"We definitely have much more than that but it was nice to get some confidence today," said Marinaro. ''We still have quite a way to go to be where we want to be."

WATCH l Moore-Towers, Marinaro deliver top free skate in Russia: