Bautista, Borromeo once again rule Philippine National Figure Skating Championships

MANILA, November 13 ------ Figure skaters Maxine Bautista and Paolo Borromeo once again showed their mastery on the ice at the Philippine National Figure Skating Championships 2025 at Mall of Asia in Pasay City.

Bautista ruled the Senior Women's category with a score of 139.21, enough to clinch back-to-back gold medals in the tournament. "Honestly, it feels amazing. I just wanted to go here and skate the best program that I could. And a win is just a cherry on top of that," she told reporters after the tournament.

Bautista said she came into this competition more confident and prepared, given that it was already the latter part of the season. "Well, definitely obviously consistency of all the elements, and today was better because I did a clean program, went for everything that I planned for, especially after Asian Open," she shared.

Cathryn Limketkai clinched the silver medal with a score of 136.27, matching her second place finish in last year's competition. Limketkai said she's much happier with her performance in the tournament, compared to the Asian Open Figure Skating Trophy last August. "I want to keep improving and I'm really happy I was able to podium again this year. It's an honor to skate for nationals every year and this is my fourth nationals already and every year I come back excited to compete for the Philippines," she said. "I've been practicing a lot of competitions and performing under pressure to help me prepare for these big competitions and I feel like that really helped and I feel like I've been able to see the improvement in competitions now," the 20-year-old explained.

Bautista and Limketkai will compete in the Bosphorus Cup in Turkiye from November 24 to 30, as part of their preparations for the Southeast Asian Games. In the National category, their fellow Filipina skater Skye Frances Patenia got bronze with 85.65 points. While in the Invitational category, American Sasha Giammarco clinched a podium finish with 92.91 points.

In the Senior Men division, Borromeo successfully defended his National title with a score of 142.09 points for the National and Invitational categories. "It feels good, but I'm not super happy with it. My skate is not what I am used to, but I'll take it and move on to the next one," he said. "Actually, at the start of the season, I was feeling really confident and strong. And on the short, I felt really good, but what happened with the long is kind of like shaking me a little bit mentally. I think I'm still recovering from it a little bit, but you know, little by little, just got to get my feet back," Borromeo explained.

The Los Angeles, California based skater said he will take a short break to "reset" and bond with his family in Cebu before resuming training for the SEA Games. South Korea's Yechang Choi (137.37) and Yehwang Choi 126.86) took home silver and bronze in the Invitational, while Brandon Baldoz of the Philippines secured a podium finish in the National with 124.48 points. "I'm honored. I think this is my fourth Nationals so. But next year I want gold. I'm gonna come back and win gold," Baldoz said. "You know, everything can be better. But I need jumps to be better, I need my spins to be better and my footwork, everything. There's no single thing I will not improve on," he added.

The Orange County based skater will go home, work on his knee's recovery and get back on the ice to train for the regional showcase. In the Junior Women category, Hayden Balucating of the Philippines took home gold with 110.00 points, Malaysia's Wei Xuan Oh got silver with 102.55 points and Izabella Hazelton clinched bronze with 98.98 points. Indonesia's Rafif Putra won gold in the Junior Men category with 124.06 points. As the three-day tournament came to a close, Philippine Skating Union President Nikki Cheng is happy to see continuous improvement in the country's figure skaters. "For me, I feel very proud when I see our skaters perform now because we see the improvement and even our judges, our panelists, they also tell us how far Philippine skating has come and they also see what the skaters were like last year and then how they're performing this year," she said. "And we have been getting praises from how well the skaters have improved. So I think these are all very good indications of where we are going as a sport, as a country. So we hope to develop more competitive athletes in the future," Cheng added.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com