The Olympic ladies’s determine skating competitors kicked off on Tuesday, Feb. 17 with the brief program.
Japan’s Ami Nakai completed in first place, whereas her veteran teammate Kaori Sakamoto completed proper behind her in second. Crew USA’s Alysa Liu grabbed third, whereas her teammates Isabeau Levito and Amber Glenn landed in eighth and thirteenth place, respectively.
Listed below are 5 key takeaways from a wildly aggressive brief program:
A superb, clear skate
There is no getting round it: The boys’s Olympic occasion was nothing in need of a splat-fest. Everybody from presumed gold medalist Ilia Malinin to notoriously constant Yuma Kagiyama stumbled via their applications. When Kazakh skater Mikhail Shaidorov took house the gold, he did it as a result of he was the one prime skater to remain upright for 2 straight applications.
Those that watched the boys’s occasion and questioned if the Milan ice was cursed needn’t marvel any longer. The ladies’s brief program was superbly executed from begin to end, and each single one of many prime contenders landed their jumps cleanly.
Axels made all of the distinction
Whereas the boys are busy combating their method via a quad arms race, the ladies are centered on an outdated favourite: the triple axel. It is a devilishly tough leap that options an additional half-rotation over each different leap in a skater’s arsenal, and valuable few ladies on this Olympic subject can do it with ease.
Those who can — Japan’s 17-year-old phenom Ami Nakai and Crew USA’s 26-year-old veteran Amber Glenn — leveraged it Tuesday with nice impact. Nakai’s, coupled together with her near-perfect brief program to “La Strada,” catapulted her to the highest of the leaderboard; Glenn’s stored her from falling out of the standings altogether after she under-rotated the ultimate leap in her program.
