Chinese Skaters Win Over Half the Medals at the Asian Winter Games
By Isobel Moody
Uno wins a single gold for disappointed Japan; Choi surprises in the ladies; Chinese skaters take both the pairs and the ice dance.
The Asian Winter Games is basically a week-long version of the Olympics for Asian countries only. (Athletes from Australia and New Zealand can also participate, but they can’t get any medals.) It’s usually happened every four years, but a shift in exactly when means the Games that concluded in Sapporo, Japan, on Sunday, were the first in six. The skating events started Thursday and also concluded on Sunday. All participating countries were allowed to send up to two skaters in each discipline.
While figure skating is now far bigger in Asia than it was even twenty years ago, the continents top skaters still generally come from only a handful of countries. For most of its recent history, Japan has been the general powerhouse, while China has dominated the pairs only. But the last decade has seen China get stronger in the other three disciplines as well. This week, it showed, as they won two of the four golds and seven of the twelve medals available. The home team disappointingly won only two medals, though one of them was a gold. Kazakhstan and the two Koreas all took home a medal each.
Men
Japan’s one gold was the men’s, which went to Shoma Uno. But even he barely beat China’s Boyang Jin. Jin even won the short program by a fraction of a point. Neither skated their best there, but while Jin’s quadruple lutz-triple toe jump combination was a mess, at least he did it, along with a solo quad toe loop jump. Uno followed a slightly two-footed solo quad flip with a quad toe he faltered out of, and so had no combination. It was close because of Jin’s improving but still weaker presentation, though also because Uno wasn’t quite as penalized on the flip as he should’ve been.
Uno had the messier long program too. He landed his quad flip again, but fell on an underrotated quad loop, which wasn’t his only fall. He landed a quad toe combination, but stumble on a solo quad toe, which wasn’t his only stumble either. But the underrotation on the loop was the only penalty to his high technical tariff. Jin was more or less clean through a quad lutz, the same pair of quad toes, and most of the rest of his program. But when he doubled a quad salchow, his tariff took a huge hit, and was much lower than Uno’s. Being mostly clean, he made that gap up, but Uno got past him on the presentation scores by about a point. There is even room for debate whether the slight misscoring on the flip proved the difference, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
It was still a good competition for China, with Han Yan taking the bronze. He skated the best he has in a long time. He had only the quad toe, but he landed a clean one in the short, and both solo and in combination ones in the free. His did have some trouble with the triple axel jump in both programs, even popping his solo one in the free. But he nailed all the easier triples, and performed his long with such beauty he nearly matched Uno’s presentation scores. Second Japanese skater Takahito Mura also skated pretty well. He matched Yan’s quad content in a clean short, and also in the long. An underrotation and doubled jump in the latter did in any chances for moving up from fourth, though.
Denis Ten of Kazakhstan should’ve contended for gold. But he had a shockingly bad competition. His short was bad enough with two underrotations and a fall. But his free skate started with three absolutely disastrous jumping passes, and the rest wasn’t much better. He finished ninth.
Ladies
It was a good week for Da-Bin Choi. First she got her ticket to the World Championships, after initial South Korean selection Na-hyun Kim conceded her leg injuries were too much, and declared she wouldn’t compete in Helsinki. (She finished competing here afterwards, though, ending up a painful 13th.) By then, Choi was already in the lead, skating a perfect short with a triple lutz-triple toe and more artistry than she’s shown in the past. Then she went and won the gold. Her free wasn’t as beautiful as her short, but it still looked very good, and was clean outside one underrotation.
The other two medals were both tales of redemption. Though for China’s Zijun Li, it’s been an ongoing one, as she counters last season’s struggles with more respectable results for this one. She was actually a little weaker here than she was at last week’s Four Continents. Here, she went for her harder triple flip-triple toe only in the free program, and underrotated both it and her easier short program triple-triple, and had some other underrotations in her long. She was actually fourth in the short and third in the free. But she held it together enough, and performed beautifully enough, in her free especially, that she managed to inch out silver.
After the short program, it looked like the struggles were going to continue for Kazakhstan’s Elizabet Tursynbaeva. She had doubled her lutz and failed to do her triple-triple, though she got a triple-double combination in later. She opened her free skate by stumbling on the lutz too. But after that she turned it around and skated a good program, managing all the rest of her triples, including a triple salchow-triple toe in her program’s second half. Even with an underrotated double axel, she was second in the segment, and only half a point behind Li for bronze.
An eleventh-hour withdrawal of her teammate left Rika Hongo the only Japanese lady on the ice. Sadly, she did not find redemption for a hard season. In the short program she went only for a triple toe-triple toe, and still underrotated and fell on it. She was still second, but things got much worst in the free. There she had exactly two jumping passes that weren’t unqualified disasters. One of them was an impressive double-axel-triple toe-double toe combination, but this was little consolation. She was lucky she even finished fourth. Li’s teammate Ziquan Zhao came to a similar fate. She had a clean and graceful third place short with a triple toe-triple toe. But in her dismal tenth-placed free, she failed to land a single clean triple, dropping her to seventh.
Pairs
If the past two weeks determine which Chinese pair joins Wenjing Sui & Cong Han at Worlds, it’ll be Xiaoyu Yu & Hao Zhang. They barely finished ahead of Cheng Peng & Yang Jin last week, but this week they took the gold over them decisively. They had a very good competition indeed, with their short flawless and their long very close. Their jump elements weren’t the hardest, but they maxed out the possible value for their split triple twist in the free. Cheng & Peng attempted no harder, and meanwhile they had problems, falling on their throw in the short and wrecking both side by side jumping passes in the free.
After the short, there even looked like there might be a challenge for silver. North Korea doesn’t send skaters to international competitions very often, but they’ve sent Tae Ok Ryom & Ju Sik Kim to a few. They’ve done pretty respectably at them. They’re lucky Japan decided to make an exemption from their current North Korean ban for participants in this event, and they made the most of it. When they landed their jumps in the short, they were only two points behind Peng & Jin. But they had more trouble in the free, most notably going down on underrotated triple toes. Meanwhile, Peng & Jin beat them over on their non-jump elements and also their presentation scores. With the mistakes they fell away, and had to settle for bronze. The other four teams that competed were much further behind.
Ice Dance
Asia still remains a relatively weak continent for ice dance. But recently, two teams have emerged as potentially or even already being their country’s best ever. Japan’s Kana Muramoto & Chris Reed were the first, making a bit of a splash when they first teamed up last year. But they stagnated a touch this season. After the last two weeks, it looks like Shiyue Wang & Xinyu Liu have passed them. At Four Continents last week they left them far behind. This week things were a lot closer. Both teams skated two excellent programs. But Wang & Liu got the higher technical tariff in both segments. They were also more fluid in their movement, and more striking in their performance. They won gold by five points.
Below Muramoto & Reed, bronze went to the second Chinese team, Hong Chen & Yan Zhao. Their elements might not have been as smoothly done as the top two, but they still performed well enough to easily distance the rest of the field. They even relied on execution to keep their position in the free dance despite a slightly weak tariff.
Next: Davis & White Pretty Much Done Competing
View full results at the Asian Winter Games website. A number of skaters concluded their seasons here. For others, the next stop is the World Championships.