Most top Chinese skaters bail on their National Championships; remaining favorites pull off comeback wins in singles and default wins in pairs and dance.
Back during Christmas weekend, Russia and Japan weren’t the only countries holding their National Championships. China was also holding theirs, in Jinlin City, near China’s northeastern corner. But while the world had results and livestreams for the first two (Russian Nationals even streamed on ESPN3), China had none of that. It wasn’t until the days after it ended that results started filtering out to the net, and fans around the world still haven’t gotten to watch anything. It wasn’t considered the most important of competitions anyway. Many of the top Chinese stars didn’t even show.
At least now, however, we have news. We have results and even scoring protocols (in Chinese). We even have a little bit of news about which Chinese pairs are going to the year’s remaining large senior skating competitions.
Men
Twenty men finished the competition:
- Boyang Jin 248.86
- Yuhang Guan 208.98
- Tangxu Li 184.61
- Yudong Chen 178.50
- Shuai Fang 167.33
- Jinze Wang 157.86
- Zijian Wang 154.36
- Qinglong Rong 152.81
- Luanfeng Li 151.83
- Zhibo Qu 150.40
- Yunda Lu 138.49
- Runqi Liu 138.35
- Zixu Li 127.43
- Jiahao Li 127.39
- Mutong Liu 112.89
- Tianze Wang 110.45
- Yuhang Liu 109.00
- Bofeng Wang 96.08
- Ziming Dong 87.43
- Shijie Diao 82.23
Han Yan, the struggling skating Chinese prince Jin overthrew, bailed. He and Jin are currently the only Chinese men’s skaters who even have the minimum technical scores required to compete at the Four Continents Championships, let alone the World Championships, for which China has two berths in the men’s competition. Combine that with the Chinese federation’s tendency to favor its established starts, sometimes to an absurd degree, and Yan more likely than not go to both anyway.
Boyang Jin won his fourth straight title, but it wasn’t a completely smooth ride. It’s clear from the protocols he fell trying both the quadruple toe loop jump and the harder quadruple lutz. This left him behind Yuhang Guan, who was fifth last year. Guan did it with the aid of a quadruple toe-double toe jump combination, but without the help of a triple axel. Jin came back to take in a free skate where he landed that combination himself, as well as the quad lutz. He doubled a quadruple salchow attempt, however, and it appears his solo quad toe wasn’t clean, and he fell elsewhere in the program. Guan’s long performance appears to have been decent, although he clearly fell on his only attempted quad and botched his three-jump badly.
Tangxu Li is currently China’s top junior, and did well for himself to win bronze. He attempted neither triple axel nor quad, but nor did most of those below him. Aside from the loop, which he underrotated in both programs and fell on in the free, his triples look far more in order than theirs as well.
Ladies
Twenty-four ladies skated in the final at Nationals:
- Ziquan Zhao 157.35
- Xiangning Li 156.11
- Yixuan Zhang 136.99
- Hongyi Chen 120.86
- Mingyuqian Zhang 120.10
- Lu Zhang 118.72
- Meichi Zhang 117.25
- Xizi Chen 114.24
- Jiayin Li 111.61
- Xiaoxue Li 108.13
- Minglu Zhao 101.17
- Guanru Jin 94.85
- Jialing Liu 93.02
- Qijing Cao 92.81
- Danning Liu 87.75
- Kun Qian 87.65
- Xiyue He 87.46
- Siyang Zhang 5.13
- Tinghui Yu 84.33
- Qiuji Jiang 82.04
- Shenya Li 78.98
- Lelin Wang 73.03
- Chuyi Wang 67.95
- Yingji Quan 63.52
This competition ran the same way the men’s did in more than one respect. They even had a struggling star bail out, this time Zijun Li. She, too, is more likely than not to get to Four Continents and Worlds anyway; again China has two berths for the latter.
Also like in the men, the reigning champion and favorite, Ziquan Zhao, had to come back to win after the short program against Xiangning Li. She was significantly behind too, after doubling her loop. She also only tried a triple toe-triple toe combination. Li tried the harder triple flip-triple toe. Neither rotated it fully. Neither attempted any triple-triples in the free either, at least after Zhao went down on her opening triple lutz, which might have been an attempt at one. Her protocols indicate she managed all her triples, at least, clean after that. Two falls, two underrotations, and only two clean triples and one combination brought Li down.
Also as in the men, there was a clear gap between the top two and the rest of the field. None of them landed anything harder than a triple loop. Bronze medalist Yixuan Zhang tried only triple toes and salchows. However, she had the only clean short of the competition. Her free was relatively clean as well, despite a fall.
Pairs
In recent years, pairs has supposed to be China’s strongest discipline. But when only one of China’s top four teams showed up, the field was reduced to six:
- Cheng Peng & Yang Jin 211.47
- Yue Han & Yongchao Yang 158.32
- Yumeng Gao & Zhong Xie 149.36
- Mingyang Zhang & Bowen Song 128.41
- Yuyao Zhang & Ziqi Jia 108.95
- Tong Sha & Xinlong Fu 100.49
Top team Wenjing Sui & Cong Han’s absence certainly wasn’t surprising. She is hopefully close to finished with her recovery from surgery, and they even debuted their short program during an interval at a hockey game recently. But it made sense they wouldn’t risk her reinjuring herself for this competition. Xiaoyu Yu & Hao Zhang and reigning champions Xuehan & Lei Wang were on the initial roster for the event. There is no word on why they dropped out. It’s more worrying in the case of the Wangs. Yu & Zhang might have just decided not to compete. But the Wangs won’t get another competition this season unless Sui & Han’s injury issues keep them out even longer than expected, so their skipping without injury makes less sense.
So Cheng Peng & Yang Jin were unchallenged for their first title together, her second and his third. They also seem to have had an excellent competition. Not perfect; they did have a singled axel in the free. But everything else appears to have gone well, especially in the short. Their elements weren’t the hardest, but none of the other five pulled off harder. Some tried. Silver and bronze medalists Yue Han & Yongchao Yang and Yumeng Gao & Zhong Xie both tried side by side triple salchows in their long program, and Gao & Xie tried them in the short program too. But none of them were even rotated, and they were either team’s only problem either. Hang & Yang stayed ahead by not falling in the short and more or less pulling their other elements off in the free.
China still has three world-class pairs and only two berths at Worlds. What will happen there remains unknown. But this week, the Chinese federation did announce that Peng & Jin and Yu & Zhang would first join Sui & Han at Four Continents, then compete as the two teams at the Asian Winter Games. Presumably the Chinese federation will decide who goes to Worlds after that.
Ice Dance
As in the pairs, only one of the top ice dance teams skated at Chinese Nationals. Eight teams total competed:
- Hong Chen & Yan Zhao 132.01
- Xibei Li & Guangyao Xiang 116.41
- Yuzhu Guo & Pengkun Zhao 93.47
- Xiaotong Wang & Kaige Zhao 89.06
- Bingxin Zou & Yu Liu 86.45
- Junfei Ren & Mingyang Jiao 73.23
- Hanmiao Liu & Chang Liu 72.44
- Baoyue Kuai & Jianing Xing 47.08
Hong Chen & Yan Zhao were the lowest-ranked of the three Chinese teams on the Grand Prix circuit. This is their first national title. They do have the technical minimums required to join the other two teams at Four Continents. The only other team whose season didn’t likely end here are bronze medalists Yuzhu Gau & Pengkun Zhao, who should go to the World Junior Championships.
It’s not easy to glean much about what an ice dance program really looked like from scoring protocols. However, it seems Chen & Zhao and silver medalists Xibei Li & Guangyao Xiang were the only two teams not to have a major issue in the short dance. Some of the other teams did a little better in the free dance, including Guo & Zhao. (Their having short dance issues would be understandable, since they had to skate a program they’re less used to.) This helped them hold on, despite their technical tariff in that segment being a little low. Li & Xiang’s technical tariff in the short dance came remarkably close to Chen & Zhao, though the winners distanced them in the free.
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The final significant Asian national competition of the year is the Korean National Championships this weekend. Thankfully we have already been promised live streaming of at least part of that competition.