S. Korean Shin Ji-a captures women's figure skating silver at Winter Youth Olympics

South Korean teenager Shin Ji-a won the silver medal in the women's singles figure skating at the Winter Youth Olympics on home ice Tuesday.

Shin, 15, became the second straight South Korean medalist in this event, following the 2020 Youth Olympic champion, You Young.

Shin scored 191.83 points overall, with 125.35 points in Tuesday's free skate added to 66.48 points from Sunday's short program.

Mao Shimada of Japan, the leader after the short program with 71.05 points, earned 125.94 points in the free skate to win the gold medal at 196.99 points.

Another Japanese skater, Yo Takagi, grabbed bronze with 183.20 points, with 67.23 points from the short program and 115.97 points from the free skate.

Shin had the third-best short program score behind Shimada and Takagi, and posted the second-highest free skate score, though it wasn't enough to overtake Shimada for the gold.

Shin and Shimada have been battling for junior supremacy over the past year or so.

They each won two events during the 2023-2024 International Skating Union Junior Grand Prix season, and then Shimada beat Shin for the gold medal at the Junior Grand Prix Final in Beijing in December.

At the 2023 world junior championships in Calgary, Canada, it was also Shimada winning the gold and Shin taking the silver.

With the 2010 Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na in attendance, alongside International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, Shin skated a relatively clean program.

A flawless opening double axel was followed by a triple loop and a triple salchow. On the next combination jump, Shin was docked 1.14 points in her grade of execution for "not clear edge" on the landing of a triple flip.

In the latter portion of the program, Shin lost another 1.08 points for under-rotating and having the wrong edge on the takeoff for a triple flip.

The big blow for Shin came with her change foot combination spin, for which she did not receive any points. Per ISU rules, all spins with a change of foot must have three revolutions on each foot.

In her short program on Sunday, Shin earned a full score of "Level 4" for the same element, earning the base score of 3.50 points plus an additional GOE score of 0.95.

In the free skate, Shimada fell trying to land her quadruple toe loop early on but under-rotated a couple of other jumps. But her program had a higher degree of difficulty than Shin's. The Japanese earned 64.78 points in technical element score, which measures skaters' technical aspects such as jumps and spins, and 62.16 points in program component score, which looks at overall choreography, interpretation of music and transition between elements.

In comparison, Shin had 63.45 points in TES and 61.90 points in PCS. (Yonhap)