<\/p>\n
EV <\/p>\n It is no surprise to see 2018 World Champion Nathan Chen in the lead after the short program. Chen did not include as much technical dif\ufb01culty as fans have seen from him in times past, but his performance ability was impressive. He seemed so comfortable and at ease as he entertained the audience. <\/p>\n Chen opened with a quad \ufb02ip that he stepped out of, but he recovered nicely with a beautiful triple axel.\u00a0He did some quick thinking and added a triple toe to his triple lutz since he was unable to turn the quad \ufb02ip into a combination. Chen easily went into \ufb01rst place with a score of 90.58.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cQuads are very important, and it\u2019s something that I think are very important,\u201d Chen said, following his skate. \u201cThey are something I will keep implementing and keep working on. I de\ufb01nitely get the most enjoyment out of doing quads, even just in practice, so that\u2019s still something I want to bring to the table in competition. But of course, there\u2019s pros and cons to them. I\u2019m putting a lot of emphasis on spins and choreography this season and it\u2019s something I will de\ufb01nitely keep trying to improve on.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the \ufb01rst Grand Prix assignment given to Malaysia and Julian Zhi Jie Yee proved that they are deserving of this spot as he is currently sitting in third place. He seemed surprised to \ufb01nd himself in this position, but he gave a great performance and earned a personal best score of 81.52 points.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The sport is growing in Malaysia, we have more ice rinks,\u201d Yee said. \u201cWe started with one ice rink in our whole country, and now we have \ufb01ve.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat performance was a good reminder of why I still do the sport,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cAnd it just feels so good to put out a performance like that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n The men’s event concludes Saturday.<\/p>\n To view our Skate America photo gallery, click here.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Skate America is October 19-21 in Everett, Washington. Figure Skaters Online\u2019s contributing writer, Michelle Kennedy will be in Everett providing live coverage! Make sure you follow Figure Skaters Online on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and check www.figureskatersonline.com for updates.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The men took to the ice for their short program at Skate America Oct. 19. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12683"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12735,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12683\/revisions\/12735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/IMG_2485.jpg\")
<\/a>ERETT, WA–The men took to the ice for their short program at Skate America Oct. 19. This being the \ufb01rst Grand Prix of the season, there were de\ufb01nitely some dif\ufb01cult moments along with some noteworthy ones<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Michal Brezina, of the Czech Republic, found himself in second place after landing a fabulous quad salchow-triple toe combination. Unfortunately he followed it up by popping his triple \ufb02ip and turning it into a single. Brezina was able to regain focus and landed a solid triple axel.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>It was unfortunate to see Vincent Zhou in sixth place after he delivered one of the strongest short programs that we have seen from him. Vincent showed tremendous growth in his new program and seemed to connect with the music, while still landing a quad lutz-triple toe combination, a quad \ufb02ip and a triple axel. Sadly, all of his jumps were judged under-rotated so he did not receive the full point value. Regardless, his performance revealed artistic progress and consistency.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n