‘Superman’ survives day of spills and no thrills
WITH A Japanese flag draped on his slender shoulders, Yuzuru Hanyu whizzed round the ice for a victory lap resembling ‘‘Superman’’ after becoming the first Asian to win the men’s Olympic figure-skating title.
The competition, however, was anything but super as Hanyu beat triple world champion Patrick Chan to triumph in a nerveracking free skate littered with spills, slips and stumbles by the leading contenders.
‘‘Oh my God, I’m so surprised, I am shocked,’’ exclaimed Hanyu when he realised the howlers had not stopped him earning Japan their first gold at the Sochi Games. ‘‘ The Olympics is so wild and unpredictable. I’ve never been this nervous for a competition in my entire life. I’m upset with the performance I had but I left everything I had out there.’’
Thirty years to the day after Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean captivated the world with their Bolero ice dance that drew a row of perfect 6.0s in the Sarajevo Olympics, fans in Sochi could muster only lukewarm applause as they witnessed error after error.
A day after smashing the 100-point barrier with a dazzling short programme, the 19-year-old Hanyu drew gasps and then stunned silence as he fell on his opening major move and then touched down with both hands after a triple flip. But he survived both mishaps to win the gold.
The blunders opened the door for Chan to leapfrog him into first place but the Canadian failed to take advantage. The triple world champion put his hands down twice on big moves and also botched a landing.
‘‘Feeling the medal slip away was definitely a lingering thought. I’m disappointed but life goes on,’’ he said.
Kazakhstan’s Denis Ten proved to be the surprise package of the night as a clean programme allowed him to storm from ninth place to collect bronze. He was the only man among the top 10 to produce an error-free skate and nailed a quadruple toeloop and seven triple jumps to scoop his country’s first- ever Olympic figure-skating medal.
For figure-skating purists it was a disappointing evening all round. Twenty-four hours after Yevgeny Plushenko abruptly pulled out of the competition at the 11th hour, the familiar chants of ‘‘Ro-ss-ia, Ro-ss-ia, Ro-ss-ia’’ were absent as the showman’s exit left the event without a home representative.
If the atmosphere was already rather muted at the start, it had an air of anti-climax at the end as fans who had paid up to $500 for their tickets left feeling short- changed.
The only man who was shown any love on Valentine’s Day was Japan’s former world champion Daisuke Takahashi who finished sixth. He was bombarded with dozens of bouquets, teddy bears and stuffed red hearts.