Dinh Tran captures silver medal.
San Francisco native among young men’ s skate rs coming on for U.S.
SAN JOSE >> Dinh Tran clapped his hands excitedly and pumped his fists as soon as he finished his free skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Wednesday.
Yeah, he knew what he’d done.
Avoiding his mistakes of the past, the 16-year-old from San Francisco put together a complete performance in the junior men’s competition at the SAP Center, earning the silver medal behind favorite Camden Pulkinen, who’d been expected to run away with the gold since finishing second at the Junior Grand Prix final last month.
“It was awesome,” Tran said, smiling. “I just did my best, and everything went right.”
While Pulkinen won easily with 219.29 points and a far superior free skate — he landed a fantastic tripletriple combination, among other things — Tran piled up 199.95 points on the strength of six triple jumps. One of them was a difficult triple Axel, which he landed in competition for the first time in the short program just two days earlier.
“It was awesome,” Tran said. “As I went through my program, I knew that I was ready. In practice, I’d run through my program a hundred times and it was just another jump that I knew that I could do. It wasn’t a crazy battle to fight, because I knew that I could already do it.”
He wasn’t the only one. Six skaters landed triple Axels in either the short program or free skate here, Pulkinen noted, suggesting big things ahead for this crop of young American skaters. Last year, Pulkinen said only two junior skaters were able to land triples.
“It’s a big step for men’s figure skating,” he said. “Junior men’s, at least.”
That Tran even had a shot at the title was heady enough.
The opportunity opened up, to begin with, because Alex Krasnozhon, who beat Pulkinen to win the Junior Grand Prix final, moved up to the senior level.
Then Pulkinen, suspecting he was a little “underwhelmed” after returning from the illustrious Junior Grand Prix final in Japan, made some errors in the short program, allowing Tran to enter the free skate just 0.60 points behind.
Exciting as that was, though, he knew he couldn’t allow himself to celebrate too soon, as he recalled doing that in the past. Tran finished third in the novice division at the championships last year.
“I was a little nervous during the warm-up,” he said. “But as soon as I landed the first jump, all of my nerves went away.”
Raised with three brothers in his mother’s studio apartment in the sketchy Tenderloin district of San Francisco, the sophomore at Stuart Hall High School remains on track to be among the top contenders to compete at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. He said he plans to stay at the junior level next season while working on the quadruple jumps he’ll need at the senior level.
And that means he’s probably the early favorite for junior gold at next year’s championships, since Pulkinen said he’s already planning to make his senior debut next season.
“My journey’s not over yet,” Tran said. “I just have to keep pushing and pushing.”
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