Oct 21 - The figure skating season kicks off with the Grand Prix circuit in France this week, ushering in a new Olympic cycle with a reshaped field following a wave of post-Milano Cortina Games retirements and breaks from competition.

Some of the biggest names are back, while others have retired or opted to sit out the season, creating opportunities for a new crop of contenders.

The six-event circuit opens with the Grand Prix de France in Angers this weekend before stops in Canada, China, the US, Finland and Japan, with the top six skaters or couples in each discipline qualifying for December's Grand Prix Final in Chongqing, China.

Eight months after the Milano Cortina Games, however, the competitive landscape already looks considerably different.

Olympic women's champion Alysa Liu of the US will sit out the season, while Olympic silver medallist Kaori Sakamoto of Japan has retired from competition.

That removes the top two from this year's Games, where Liu won gold ahead of Sakamoto and Japanese teenager Ami Nakai.

KAGIYAMA TAKES SEASON OFF

The men's competition has also lost one of its Olympic headliners for the season.

Japan's Yuma Kagiyama, silver medallist in Milan and runner-up at the 2026 world championships, announced in April that he would take the competitive season off to rediscover his enjoyment of skating and pursue new challenges.

American Ilia Malinin, who bounced back from a disastrous eighth-place finish at the Games to win his third world title, is back, along with Olympic champion Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan.

Shaidorov produced one of the biggest surprises of the Milan Games when he won the men's title.

"Medals don't define a person. That's the mindset I have now," Malinin told Dazed magazine about his Olympic heartbreak.

"It's not (about) winning medals any more. I want to change the sport. I want to push figure skating to a new level of attention. I'm starting to see that now."

Malinin opens his season at Skate America, which runs from November 13-15, before competing at the NHK Trophy in Japan two weeks later.

The men's field also includes Olympic bronze medallist Shun Sato, twice European champion Adam Siao Him Fa of France and Americans Jason Brown and Andrew Torgashev.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Pairs has undergone perhaps the most obvious changing of the guard.

Japan's Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who captured the Olympic title in Milan, retired from competitive skating at the end of last season.

The twice world champions said in April that they had already been contemplating retirement before the Games and felt after their Olympic triumph that they had nothing more to give competitively.

Their absence leaves Olympic silver medallists Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia and bronze medallists Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany among the leading pairs entering the new cycle.

Ice dance, by contrast, will feature the Olympic and world champions Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France. They won the Milan title ahead of Madison Chock and Evan Bates and Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.

Americans Chock and Bates have opted against competing this season rather than announcing their retirement, while Canadians Gilles and Poirier are sitting out the Grand Prix circuit.

Their absence gives Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron, who captured the Olympic title in their first season competing together, an early opportunity to establish themselves as the leading dance team of the new four-year cycle.

Britain's Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, world bronze medallists in 2025, will also hope to capitalise. REUTERS