Japan's Mao Asada took the ladies' gold medal at the Four Continents championships yesterday by recording a season's best total score of 193.25, defeating world champion compatriot Miko Ando.
Canada's Joannie Rochette finished second with 179.54 while Ando collected bronze with a total of 177.66.
The top three were separated by less than a point after the short program two days previously, but Asada outperformed the rest of the field in the free skate, with local hero and main rival Kim Yu-na absent with a hip injury.
PHOTO: AP
Asada performed to Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu with a triple flip and triple loop that delighted the crowd.
She scored 132.31, less than a point off her free skate personal best.
"My performance was better than I expected," Asada said. "It was easily my best performance of the season so far."
"The audience helped me do that. It has been a great experience coming here. It's my first time to compete in Korea and the Korean fans have really supported me," she said.
The triumph has Asada in good stead for next month's World Championships in Sweden.
"Last year in the world championships I came second. I want to match that and hopefully even do better this year," Asada said.
Canadian champion and reigning Four Continents bronze medalist Rochette managed a season's best of 119.50.
With the gauntlet thrown down by Asada's impressive performance, Ando was last to skate and fell early in her routine, never looking like troubling her young compatriot. Ando scored 117.59.
Local skater Kim Na-young finished fourth with a personal best total score of 158.49, and Canada's Mira Leung was fifth.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier