MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin of the U.S. and Shun Sato of Japan will decide the team figure skating medals at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
Amber Glenn finished behind Japanese star Kaori Sakamoto and Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia in the women's free skate on Sunday night, leaving the defending champion Americans tied with their biggest rivals with only the men's free skate still to go.
The U.S. and Japan were both sitting on 59 points after seven of the
eight programs in the three-day competition. Italy had 52 points and a two-point advantage over Georgia in the race for the bronze medal.
Glenn spun out of her opening triple axel, the most difficult triple jump that only she tried among the women, and had to add a late double toe loop after missing an earlier triple as part of a combination. Those two mistakes, and a couple of other errors along the way, left the three-time reigning U.S. champion with 138.62 points — and more crucially, third in the segment.
Sakamoto, the individual bronze medalist at the Beijing Games, made a couple of mistakes of her own, including one during her late combination jumping pass. But she screamed in delight when her score of 148.62 points was shown on the screens.
“It wasn’t how I wanted to feel,” Glenn said afterward. “The adrenaline was really up and I think I just crashed a little bit.”
Before the women took the ice, Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea delivered the best free skate of their pairs career when the U.S. needed it most, beating the Canadian duo to avoid dropping a much-needed point to the winning Japanese pairs team.
Kam and O'Shea scored 135.36 points for their program, which opened with “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics and finished with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara won the segment with a career-best of their own of 155.55 points, pulling the Japanese to within two points of the Americans with two events remaining.
“We couldn’t be more proud to be able to perform under what we felt was so much energy,” said the 34-year-old O’Shea, who was an Olympic alternate in 2018 but is making his debut at the Winter Games. "We walked into the day, walked into the rink with positive emotions, with an offensive attitude, and that showed out there on the ice."
Now, it's up to the men to decide the medals.
Japan got a surprising lift on Saturday night when Yuma Kagiyama upset the heavily favored Malinin in the short program, giving his team the maximum of 10 points. But the Japanese decided to swap Kagiyama out for the free skate for Sato, who finished behind his countryman at their national championships in December.
The U.S. was always going to give Malinin the opportunity to be its closer.
The two-time reigning world champion was mediocre only by his standards in his short program. But Malinin's real strength comes in the free skate, where there are seven jumping passes and his incredible leaping ability gives him a tremendous advantage.
Malinin's planned program called for seven quad jumps, including the quad axel, which nobody but him has landed in competition.
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