Feb. 18 (UPI) — China’s Sui Wengjing and Han Cong set a world record with a score of 84.41 to take the lead in the short program portion of the figure skating pairs competition at the 2022 Winter Games on Friday in Beijing.
Russians achieved the next three-highest scores at Capital Indoor Stadium. Vladimir Morozov and Evgenia Tarasova logged an 84.25 for the second-best score. The Top 2 scores were the highest short program ones in the history of the Winter Games pairs competition.
Aleksandr Galliamov and Anastasia Mishina, the reigning world champions, placed third at 82.76. Dmitri Kozlovskii and Aleksandra Boikova posted a 78.59 for fourth. China’s Peng Cheng and Jin Yang were fifth.
The Top 16 scores from the short program advance to the free skating portion of the pairs competition Saturday in Beijing. The short program score is combined with the free skating score to determine the winner of the competition.
Moving to the top of the leaderboard ⬆️ Mishina/Gallyamov of the ROC.#WinterOlympics | #Olympics pic.twitter.com/71oapvqAvr— On Her Turf (@OnHerTurf) February 18, 2022
Team USA’s Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were the first pair to take the ice for the short program. They held the lead until Peng Cheng and Jin Yang took over more than halfway through the competition.
Knierim and Frazier totaled a 74.23 for the sixth-best score. Americans Timothy Leduc and Ashley Cain-Gribble placed seventh with a score of 74.13.
“We just kept looking at each other and thinking, it’s been six years of work to get to here,” Cain-Gribble told NBC. “We weren’t going to let any moment get away from us. … I just wanted to put on a strong performance for both of us and our team back home.”
FIERCE @alexa_knierim & @Brandon_F1992
That’s the tweet. #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/U1YyfoJpyV— On Her Turf (@OnHerTurf) February 18, 2022
Sui and Han skated to Mission Impossible 2. They performed a triple toe loop, throw triple flip, triple twist lift, a flying change foot combination spin, a backward outside death spiral and more en route to their record score.
They received the second-best element score, and led the field with a 38.45 for their presentation. They skated clean while impressing the small crowd with the power and height on their throws, jumps and twists.
Tarasova and Morozov performed a triple toe loop, triple twist lift, throw triple loop and a backward, in addition to other sequences for the second-best overall score. The Russians’ 46.04 element score was the highest in the 18-pair field.
Their score of 9.00 on the triple twist lift was the highest rated executed element of the competition. They also received the most points for skating skills (9.61).
Germany’s Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot won the pair skating competition at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but are not entered in Beijing.
Sui Wengjing and Han Cong won silver in Pyeongchang. Eric Radford, who teamed up with Meagn Duhamel to win bronze for Canada in the event in 2018, joined Vanessa James on Friday in Beijing. Radford and James posted the 12th-best score in the short program.
The 2022 Winter Games figure skating finale airs at 6 a.m. EST Saturday on USA and re-airs at 8:30 p.m. on NBC.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.