Pyeongchang, South Korea – US skater Nathan Chen, a gold medal favorite in the men’s program, struggled Friday, but his team picked him up and are in second place after the opening day of figure skating competition.
The US trails gold medal favorite Team Canada as Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford made up for teammate Patrick Chan’s shaky short program to give the Canadians the lead. Japan is third, followed by the Olympic Athletes of Russia.
Chen put the US in an early hole after doubling a triple toeloop and quad toeloop and falling on his troublesome triple axel. As for Canada’s Chan, he fell on both of his quads but rallied in the back half of his program.
Duhamel and Radford scored 76.57 points in their program to finish behind Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, whose season-best 80.92 points dazzled a crowd full of Russian fans. But not even that big number could make up for teammate Mikhail Kolyada’s poor short program.
Shoma Uno skated a near-flawless short program, the only stumble coming on his opening jump, and scored 103.25 points to give Japan the early lead.
The team event continues later Friday with the pairs short program.
Source: New York Post
