Queen Yuna reigns supreme
LONDON, Ont. — The defending world champion left it all on the ice, including blood, but Carolina Kostner’s best was never going to be enough if Kim Yu- Na showed up with her A- game.
And the exquisite Olympic champion from Korea, returning from more than a year in retirement, skated a program of such surpassing beauty to music from Les Miserables, the only drama was in calculating the scope of her victory. The answer: 20.42 points. Queen Yuna buried them all. On an eventful final night of the ISU world figure skating championships, Kostner’s nose began to spring a leak just as she was being introduced to begin her free skate, fourth from the last in the program, and attempts to stem the flow — pinching the bridge of her nose as she did a lap around the ice — were only partly successful.
By the early moments of her skate, the Italian had left spatters of blood on the ice and just kept going, a gutsy performance in which she completed six triple jumps and tried a seventh in the very last movement, when she fell.
She appeared to have a mouthful of blood and her hands were stained with it when she exited for the kissandcry area, and if the judges had given her a half- dozen extra points for moxie, no one would have complained.
But she’d still have lost by a couple of touchdowns.
“I had a great long program today and I am proud I could do it,” said Kim. “I am happy as well to skate here in Canada again with this wonderful audience. I am glad, too, that we have more spots for Korea at the Olympics and I want to experience this with my fellow skaters.”
Mao Asada of Japan skated wonderfully, despite two- footing her signature triple Axel, just after Kostner, but was unable to overtake her and eventually took home bronze.
“I did not feel like I couldn’t perform,” Kostner said. “I was a bit scared that they would call me back. It would have most definitely been easier for me without these circumstances, but it was the lesson I had to learn here, like a test for me. I am happy I passed it and also a little proud of myself. I tried to look at myself from the outside and laugh at it, it was the only thing I could do, I saw all the people cheering for me.”
Canada’s 17- year- old Kaetlyn Osmond, a shocking fourth after the short program at her first world championships, was left with the stage, in the midst of all those magnificent skaters, and somehow got through it without a major disaster, though a couple of falls and a softer program than those of the other challengers cost her four places.
Even so, she finished eighth, and secured a second berth for a Canadian woman in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, a stunning achievement for a senior worlds rookie.