Great return
Chinese pair secures victory after foot stress fracture
China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong returned to competition in fine style with a thrilling victory at the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships on Saturday.
The 2018 Olympic silver medalists edged Canada’s Kirsten MooreTowers and Michael Marinaro by just six hundredths of a point to win the pairs competition at the annual event in Anaheim, California.
The former world champions were back on the international stage for the first time since claiming silver at the Pyeongchang Games last year. They had been sidelined this season because Sui was recovering from a stress fracture in her right foot.
Performing to Rain, In Your Black
Eyes by Ezio Bosso, Sui and Han opened with a triple twist, a triple toe-double toeloop combination and throw triple Salchow. Sui then fell on an under-rotated triple Salchow but recovered to land a throw triple flip. The pair placed first in the free skate with 136.92 points and finished with a total of 211.11.
“We were pretty nervous,” said Sui. “I’m really happy we could show what we have today on the ice, but honestly this was not the best of us. We will do the best we can and continue training hard.”
Han admitted they still feel a little rusty following their layoff. “We were only showing what we have completed during our training, but actually we are not familiar with our program yet,” he said.
Sui said this is only the third time they have performed their long program and that it needs fine-tuning before next month’s world championships in Saitama, Japan.
“There are problems like difficulty level, quality. To be honest, there are still some technical elements that we haven’t put into the program,” Han said.
“This competition is a good motivation for us to reflect and improve before the world championships.”
Moore-Towers and Marinaro, who were first after Friday’s short program, also skated well with 136.39 points, but the Chinese pair had higher scores in program components. The Canadians finished with 211.05 points but also struggled on a lift late in their routine.
“We had a similar circumstance at our Canadian championships a couple of weeks ago. When we train it in practice it doesn’t go this way so it’s a bit of a head-scratcher for us,” Moore-Towers said.
“It was one of those things that happened and we’re not really sure why, but we will make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
China’s Peng Cheng and Jin Yang were third. American pairs finished fourth through sixth, led by Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc.
Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier were fifth, followed by Tarah Kayne and Danny O’Shea.