Olympics figure skating: Hanyu shines; Chen stumbles

pulse 07:45 - 16 February 2018

The defending Olympic champion, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, skating for the first time since October, gave an elegant, unhurried performance to take the lead after the men’s figure skating short program Friday.

Hanyu had sustained ligament damage in his ankle in November but showed no ill effects, landing a quad salchow, a triple axel and quad toeloop-triple toeloop combination.

Among the strong field, three other skaters stood out: In second place was veteran Javier Fernandez of Spain, who performed a Charlie Chaplin inspired routine, followed by Hanyu’s countryman, Shoma Uno, and Jin Boyang of China. All of them hit their two quadruple jumps.

But there was a poor performance from one of the best quad jumpers of all, Nathan Chen of the United States. Nerves appeared to get the best of him, as they did in the team event. He fell on his opening jump, a quad flip, and did not do a combination jump, which is required. He also stumbled out of a triple axel.

He is 29 points behind Hanyu; in the current scoring system, a skater can move up significantly in the long program, but Chen would appear to be an extreme longshot to make the medal podium.

The New York Times