Team North America has all the heavy hitters

Some of the world’s top-rated figure skaters have agreed to come to Spokane in April to represent the United States and Canada in the first-ever Team Challenge Cup.

Team North America will feature reigning U.S. Champion Gracie Gold and top U.S. men’s skater Jason Brown, who has been recovering from an injury. The team will also feature the world’s top-ranked pairs team of Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada and the ice dancing team of Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, also of Canada.

Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion Scott Hamilton was in Spokane on Monday as U.S. Figure Skating announced most of the team that will compete in the Team Challenge Cup on April 22-24.

“It’s a new style of competition and the way they are presenting it is brand new. For the viewer, there will be a very small learning curve, we hope,” he said. “But basically it’s three continents going head to head to head as teams.”

The skaters chosen to represent team Europe will be announced Wednesday and team Asia will be announced on March 9.

Hamilton, 57, who won the 1984 Olympic gold medal and four consecutive world championships, acknowledged that figure skating needs to do more to generate interest in the sport.

“You put good stuff out there and good stuff comes back. I’m a firm believer in that,” said Hamilton, who will lead the coverage of the event for CBS. “With skating, it hit kind of a dip. Sometimes it takes a while to recover.”

The sport recovers by continually highlighting its best stars. But they also have to win consistently, he said.

“You’ve got a strong three-way rivalry in U.S. ladies figure skating between Gracie Gold, Polina Edmunds and Ashley Wagner. That’s melodrama right there,” he said. “On the men’s side, you have Jason (Brown), who is extremely popular and Adam (Rippon), who just won his first title.”

Hamilton also mentioned Max Aaron, who finished second to Rippon; and Nathan Chen, who finished third even after he landed a combined six quad jumps in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

“The United States has a lot of really great talent,” Hamilton said. “The more you showcase it the more people get interested. But it can’t be shlock that you just throw out in front of people. It has to be done in a creative way.”

Enter the inaugural Team Challenge Cup, which U.S. skating officials hope will be the season-ending event every other year.

“For the crowd, it will be ‘Who’s got the lead, who’s coming up next, what’s their strategy,’ ” Hamilton said. “With head-to-head performances, it’s a really interesting format. It will be fun to put that out in front of an audience. Once they see how it’s working, it’s going to be really, really exciting.”

And the inaugural event is coming to the Lilac City, which set attendance records in the 2007 and 2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

“It’s great that Spokane has become kind of a destination for skating and high-level competition,” Hamilton said. “It’s a great community. It will be neat to see the world arrive in Spokane.”