Beijing, China, February 8, 2022: The reign of superstar skater Yuzuru Hanyu as Olympic men’s figure skating champion is hanging by a thread after a high-level short programme at the Capital Indoor Stadium on Tuesday.
The two-time Olympic champion at Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018, known as the “Ice Prince”, scored 95.15 points after a costly error on his opening jump and finished in a lowly eighth place. The free skate will take place on Thursday.
Bidding for a hat trick of gold medals, the 27-year-old Japanese was upstaged by the gold medal favourite Nathan Chen of the United States and by his own Japanese teammates – Winter Youth Olympic Games champion Yuma Kagiyama and PyeongChang 2018 silver medallist Shoma Uno.
Chen led the 24 qualifiers with a world record 113.97, beating Hanyu’s previous mark of 111.82, while Kagiyama, just 18, came in second with 108.12. Uno, the Sapporo 2017 Asian Winter Games champion, was third with 105.90.
The top six skaters who will compete in the final group on Thursday all produced their personal best performances on an incredible morning of top-level skating.
There were other notable performances from Asian skaters, as Korea’s Cha Jun-hwan came fourth with 99.51 and China’s Jin Boyang 11th with 90.98.
Kagiyama performed to “When You’re Smiling” sung by Michael Buble and had the audience clapping along as he blended with the music.
“This is my first Olympic Games ever,” said Kagiyama. “To be honest with you I thought I was going to be very nervous but from the beginning to the end I was just having fun skating.
“For the jumps I could not complain, I had some nice landings, but on some steps my legs were giving up on me which was a little minus for me if I was scoring myself. But everything else was quite good.”
When asked if he could catch Chen in the free skate on Thursday morning, Kagiyama said: “I don’t know. My goal is not winning over somebody, I am always competing with myself. If I do my best performance the score and rank will just follow. I don’t try to be No. 1 or win over somebody. I just want to do better just for me. I think that’s the best.”
Uno echoed these sentiments and said Chen skated a “perfect” performance and that it would be almost impossible for any athlete to beat him.