The Olympic girls’s determine skating competitors kicked off on Tuesday, Feb. 17 with the quick program.
Japan’s Ami Nakai completed in first place, whereas her veteran teammate Kaori Sakamoto completed proper behind her in second. Group USA’s Alysa Liu grabbed third, whereas her teammates Isabeau Levito and Amber Glenn landed in eighth and thirteenth place, respectively.
Listed here are 5 key takeaways from a wildly aggressive quick program:
, clear skate
There is no getting round it: The boys’s Olympic occasion was nothing wanting a splat-fest. Everybody from presumed gold medalist Ilia Malinin to notoriously constant Yuma Kagiyama stumbled by their packages. When Kazakh skater Mikhail Shaidorov took residence the gold, he did it as a result of he was the one prime skater to remain upright for 2 straight packages.
Those that watched the boys’s occasion and questioned if the Milan ice was cursed needn’t surprise any longer. The ladies’s quick 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Whereas the boys are busy preventing their approach by a quad arms race, the ladies are targeted on an outdated favourite: the triple axel. It is a devilishly tough bounce that options an additional half-rotation over each different bounce in a skater’s arsenal, and valuable few girls on this Olympic discipline can do it with ease.
Those who can — Japan’s 17-year-old phenom Ami Nakai and Group USA’s 26-year-old veteran Amber Glenn — leveraged it Tuesday with nice impact. Nakai’s, coupled along with her near-perfect quick program to “La Strada,” catapulted her to the highest of the leaderboard; Glenn’s saved her from falling out of the standings altogether after she under-rotated the ultimate bounce in her program.
