Lee Jun-hyeong shed light on Korea’s figure skating

Lee Jun-hyeong (aged 20, Dankook University, photo), a rising star in men’s figure skating, shed light on Korea’s figure skating at the 2016 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.

On Thursday, Lee got his personal best score (70.05) at men’s single short program held in TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Before this event, his highest individual score was 68.52 that he made at the 7th event of the 2014 ISU Junior Grand Prix of Figure Skating. Ranked 18th place out of 30 skaters in short program, Lee obtained a ticket to go for free skating event, which is given to top 24 skaters.

Having successfully performed the first required element of triple jump (three full turns in the air) along with Muse’s Exogenesis Symphony Part III, Lee obtained 1.43 point in grade of execution (GOE). Unfortunately, however, he made a bit unstable landing for the second jump of triple flip-triple toe loop, which gave a cut in scores, after perfectly finishing all the remaining elements of triple loop jump, step sequence and change foot combination spin.

“My final score is not that good as my second jump took some points off. Still, I feel fortunate to have finished other skills that I had difficulties during the practice without mistakes," he said after the event. "For the next step of free skating, I want to score higher points by performing quadruple toe loop jump (four full turns in the air).”

The first place was taken by Yuzuru Hanyu (Japan, 110.56), gold medalist from the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games followed by Javier Fernández (Spain, 98.52) and Patrick Chan (Canada, 94.84). A distant front runner of more than 10 points, Hanyu is a step closer to the second straight win. The free skating event will be held on Saturday.

임보미기자 bom@donga.com