Thunderclap in Las Vegas on Friday, where Nathan Chen, three-time world champion and four-time defending champion, took 4th place in the Skate America short program. The American made two big mistakes: a fall on his first quadruple lutz and then a failed quadruple flip. The 22-year-old skater finished his program with his hands on his face, struggling to hide his frustration.
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Chen, who has grown accustomed to disgusting competition in recent years in Nevada, finds himself potentially out of the podium for the first time on the eve of Saturday’s free skate, during which he will have to show a different face.
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« I still have to find out exactly what went wrong. I don’t want to find excuses for myself. I made mistakes. I did not skate well Chen commented.
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Four months before the Beijing Winter Games, Chen, one of the contenders for Olympic gold, was credited with a score of 82.89 points, some 28 points below his personal best (111.17 pts) established last year.
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The French Siao Him Fa and Aymoz 10th and 11th
The first place is occupied by his compatriot Vincent Zhou (97.43 pts), who is ahead of the Japanese Shoma Uno (89.07 pts) and another American Jimmy Ma (84.52 pts). ” I will take this accumulated confidence to move forward. I did a good job running the program, while showing off some of the great things done in training. I can skate even better “, Assured the bronze medalist of the 2019 Worlds who, like Chen, has planned five quadruple jumps for his free program.
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The two French competitors, Adam Siao Him Fa and Kevin Aymoz, are respectively 10th (67.60 pts) and 11th places (58.14 pts).
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Earlier on Friday, Russian duo Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov wowed audiences with their brilliant performance to take the lead as a couple. The double European champions obtained 80.36 points to well outstrip their young compatriots Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii (75.43).
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