Canadian Patrick Chan fifth at Trophee Bompard after short program

BORDEAUX, France – Toronto’s Patrick Chan is fifth at the Trophee Bompard after scoring a 76.10 on Friday in the men’s short program.

While the Trophee Bompard is scheduled to go until Sunday in Bordeaux — 590 kilometres away from Paris where the event is normally held — terrorist attacks in the French capital on Friday night that killed at least 120 people could impact the rest of the weekend’s schedule.

Skate Canada said in a statement that no decision had been made to withdraw as of Friday night, but added they would “evaluate in the morning.”

As of early Saturday morning, the United States’ team had not withdrawn.

Japan’s Shoma Uno sits first with 89.56 points, followed by Russia’s Maxim Kovtun (86.82) and Japan’s Daisuke Murakami (80.24).

“Had a lot of good things, successful, here that I had challenges with at Skate Canada,” said Chan, referring to the previous stop on the Grand Prix of Figure Skating circuit where he won gold. “Might’ve, going in to the first toe, I think I was thinking of the Axel and the Lutz, since I had missed it at Skate Canada.

“I was not really thinking about what I was doing.”

Trophee Bompard has been one of Chan’s strongest Grand Prix of Figure Skating stops throughout his career. The three-time figure skating world champion recorded his personal best scores in the short program and free skate at the 2013 event, setting the world record for free skate and combined total that year.

American Gracie Gold took the lead in the women’s competition, scoring a personal best 73.32 points in an almost flawless short program to the popular tango song “El Choclo.”

Gold improved her previous best by 2.06 points to build a comfortable lead of 7.69 points over Russian Julia Lipnitskaia heading into the free skating.

Gabrielle Daleman of Newmarket, Ont., was sixth with 55.35 points.

Wearing an elegant black dress with a red lining, the 20-year-old Gold landed a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination at the Meriadeck ice rink.

Gold is looking for another podium finish after her second place at Skate America last month in the seven-event Grand Prix series.

Italian Roberta Rodeghiero was third with 58.81 points while world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva scored 56.21 for fifth place.