[Photo News] Cha Jun-hwan ups personal best in free skate

Korean figure skater Cha Jun-hwan rewrote his personal best in the free skate event at the Winter Olympics men’s event at PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, Saturday, marking 165.16 points despite a mistake. 

The 16-year-old skater ranked 15th, tallying 248.59 total points, a best for men’s figure skating for South Korea.

Japan’s “figure skating prince,” Yuzuru Hanyu took the gold medal with a score of 317.85, followed by Japan’s Shoma Uno and Spain’s Javier Fernandez with 306.9 and 305.24 total points, respectively.

 

In a performance of four minutes and 40 seconds, Cha skated to a track from 1994 movie “Il Postino: The Postman.” Cha started with a clean triple lutz and triple toe loop combination, but failed to complete a quadruple jump, crashing upon landing. Cha finished seven jumps out of the eight successfully.

After the performance, Cha turned to the audience with a smile.

“I had been so nervous (before the free skate), but the cheers and support from the home crowd helped me a lot,” Cha told Yonhap News Agency.

As for the mistake on the quadruple jump, Cha said he regretted it as he had done well on the jump last season.

“I will never forget this season,” Cha added, saying he would keep progressing without injuries in the coming years. 

 
All photos courtesy of Yonhap.

By Park Ju-young (jupark@heraldcorp.com)