Japan’s Miura dominates junior figure skating worlds, China’s Chen finishes eighth
OTTAWA, March 5– Japanese sensation Kao Miura made up for a disappointing 13th- place finish a year ago by winning the men’s title with more than 40 points to spare, while China’s Chen Yudong rose from 14th to eighth at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Calgary, Canada on Saturday. Skating to “Beauty and the Beast”, Miura, 17, completed a triple Axel-…
OTTAWA, March 5 (Xinhua) — Japanese sensation Kao Miura made up for a disappointing 13th-place finish a year ago by winning the men’s title with more than 40 points to spare, while China’s Chen Yudong rose from 14th to eighth at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Calgary, Canada on Saturday.
Skating to “Beauty and the Beast”, Miura, 17, completed a triple Axel-Euler-triple Salchow, quad toe, quad Salchow, triple Axel, quad toe-triple toe and triple flip-double Axel sequence, and earned a level four for two spins.
The ISU Four Continents champion, whose only glitch came when he stepped out of the triple loop, scored 179.63 points in his free skate and totaled 264.74 points overall.
“Today I was able to make a good performance. I would give myself 70 percent,” Miura said. “Especially in the second half, I was able to land the quad-triple combination and I believe it was more beautiful than the triple-triple in my short program.”
“As for this world junior gold medal – last year I was injured and I was not satisfied with the result. This time I came here to redeem myself, to get revenge. It is a different kind of satisfaction but satisfying all the same,” he added.
Naoki Rossi of Switzerland, with a 141.22-point free skate and a 220.68-point total score, settled for the silver, the first junior worlds’ medal in 23 years for his country. Miura’s compatriot Nozomu Yoshioka rose from seventh to earn the bronze in his junior worlds debut after scoring 141.35 in the free skate and 217.79 in total.
China’s Chen opened his performance to “Micmacs a Tire-Larigot” with a clean quad Salchow and a triple Axel in his third jump, collected 139.19 despite a two-point deduction for two falls and was ranked fifth in the free skating, but overall moved up to eighth at 205.12 points.
His ranking has secured two entries for China in men’s figure skating at the 2024 World Junior Championships.
“I think it was a fairly good performance for myself in my last competition of the current season,” 18-year-old Chen said. “I hesitated a little before the second jump [a quad toe that he fell while landing], but overall, it was a good performance.”
In the ice dancing free dance completed earlier on Saturday, a sister-brother combination, Katerina Mrazkova and Daniel Mrazek, danced straight into the history books, winning the first medal and title for a Czech ice dance team at the junior worlds.
Silver medalists Hannah Lim and Ye Quan also made history as the first ice dancers from South Korea to win an ISU championship medal. Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont of Canada moved up one spot to earn the bronze.
China’s pair of Li Xuantong and Wang Xinkang ranked 22nd and missed the free dance.
With the competition wrapped up on Saturday, the World Junior Championships will hold its exhibition gala on Sunday. Enditem
