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USA’s Nathan Chen jumped into the lead as the ISU Grand Prix Rostelecom Cup opened with the Men’s Short Program on Friday in Moscow. Olympic Champion Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN) had to settle for second place for now as he fell on his jump combination. Dmitri Aliev, of Russia, came out strong in his Grand Prix debut to place third in the first phase of the competition.
Skating to ‘Nemesis’, Chen nailed a quad Lutz+triple toe combo and followed up with a quad flip and somewhat shaky triple Axel, as well as two level-four spins and level four footwork to score a season’s best of 100.54 points. “I am happy with the scores that I got and happy that I did fairly clean program that early in the season. I definitely have a lot of work going into the (PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter) Games et cetera, but I am happy with what I did and I just need to keep my mind straight and keep working hard”, the 18-year-old told the press.
Hanyu, who skated last out of the 12 men, stepped out of his opening quad loop that was under-rotated but recovered to hit a brilliant triple Axel. However, the World Champion then fell on the back end of his quad toe-triple toe combination. He earned 94.85 points. “I’ve competed in Moscow six and seven years ago and it was here that I won my first Grand Prix event, so I have good memories,” the two-time World Champion said, adding: “Today I made some mistakes in my short program, but overall it didn’t feel bad. I hope I will skate better tomorrow.”
2017 World Junior silver medalist Aliev turned in a clean performance to ‘Masquerade Waltz’ that included a triple Lutz-triple toe, quad toe and a triple Axel. Aliev picked up a personal best score of 88.77 points. “The only thing that didn’t work today is the Lutz that was planned as a quad. I think I rushed it and I was a little nervous. I have to get used to this atmosphere and do my job, though,” the Russian Junior Champion commented.
Russian Champion Mikhail Kolyada fell out of his quad toe and currently sits in fourth place at 85.79, almost tied with Misha Ge (UZB) at 85.02 points in fifth. Deniss Vasiljevs (LAT) stands in sixth (82.44 points).
The ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating series consists of six events and culminates with the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Nagoya (JPN) in December. The top six skaters/couples in each discipline qualify for the Final, and global prize money for the Grand Prix is US$272,000.
Full entry lists and results of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating 2017/18 are available here. Follow the discussion on social media by using #GPFigure #FigureSkating.