Jin Boyang of China jumped his way to gold at the Four Continents Championships in Taipei in the last international competition before the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Jin, who missed last month’s Grand Prix Final with foot injuries, received 200.78 points in Saturday’s free skate for a total of 300.95.
“After I withdrew from the Grand Prix Final I worked really hard on my recovery and I trained the hardest I ever have,” Jin said. “Thanks to that I was able to give an almost perfect performance today. The result of this competition gives me confidence to challenge myself to give two perfect performances in Pyeongchang.”
Photo: Anthony Wallace, AFP
Jin’s routine included a huge quadruple lutz, quad salchow, a quad toe-double toe and a quad toe. The only glitch came when the two-time World bronze medalist stumbled on a triple lutz-double toe combination.
Japan’s Shoma Uno, first after the short program, scored 197.45 points and totaled 297.94 to slip to second.
“Unfortunately, I missed my quad flip, but the good part was that I kept calm and finished the program nicely,” Uno said. “I didn’t do my best today, but I still think the practice was not a waste. I would like to be more confident and take it to the next competition.”
Jason Brown of the US was third with a season-best 179.44 points for 269.22 overall.
Brown’s routine featured a triple axel-triple toe and five more clean triples.
“Nothing was easy about this year,” Brown said. “I felt that I was chasing something — in this case it was kind of chasing the quad. That wasn’t who I am.”
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