By Xiangxuan Kong
\nPhoto by Robin Ritoss<\/p>\n
Beijing\u00a0\u2013 The men\u2019s event closed the four-day\u00a0Skate to Milano on September 21. Individual neutral athlete Petr Gumennik, Donovan Carrillo of Mexico, Hyungyeom Kim of Korea, Kyrylo Marsak of Ukraine, and Yu-Hsiang Li of Chinese Taipei secured the five quotas for men.<\/p>\n
Petr Gumennik was in the lead after his short program\u00a0Perfume \u2013 The Story of a Murder<\/i>. His free skate\u00a0Onegin<\/i>\u00a0set the bar high in difficulty levels, with multiple quadruple and triple jumps planned. Despite not executing the program perfectly, Gumennik maintained his lead with a total score of 262.82, winning a quota for Milano Cortina.<\/p>\n
Coming in second place was Hyungyeom Kim of Korea. The 2024 Youth Olympic Games champion was in fourth after the short program. Quite nervous after the short, Kim admitted that he had some doubts about the free skate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started to doubt that whether I can have a good performance in the free skate. During free skate, I tried a lot to express what I wanted to perform.\u201d Kim scored 153.91 in the free skate, moving his total up to 228.60 in second place. \u201cThis competition was really difficult for me and I was really tired,\u201d said Kim. \u201cBut the result showed that I\u2019ve done a really good job and I\u2019m really satisfied. I feel extremely honored to represent my country at this competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mexican skater Donovan Carrillo was second after his short program\u00a0Hip Hip Chin China<\/i>. \u201cI had one of my greatest performance and I enjoyed it from the beginning to end. I tried to get a different approach after (not qualifying at) the worlds. This time I was more focused on enjoying, trying to just let things work out in a natural way. I tried to let my body flow with the technique and apparently it worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his Elvis Presley free skate, Carrillo struggled with two quadruple jumps: falling on a quadruple Salchow\u2013double toeloop and popping a quadruple Salchow into a double. The wait for the score \u201cfelt longer than the program itself to be honest,\u201d noted Carrillo. Placing ninth in the free skate, the advantage from his short program was enough to give Carrillo a total of 222.36 and the bronze medal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe program was not what I was hoping,\u201d said Carrillo. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful to make it to the Olympics the second time and honored to meet this new generation of great athletes. It\u2019s so inspiring to see how everyone is doing so well and pushing their limits and making their country very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Kyrylo Marsak of Ukraine, securing a spot at Milano Cortina was a childhood dream come true. Marsak sat in sixth after the short program, only one place away from the quota cut-off. He performed a strong free skate\u00a0I\u2019m Tired<\/i>. \u201cI gave everything that I have today. It wasn\u2019t perfect but it was pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A total score of 217.57 temporarily put Marsak in first place. When he found out that this was high enough to put him among the top five skaters, an overjoyed Marsak yelped out, \u201cI can go to the Olympics,\u201d in the Mixed Zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t express my feelings in words because I\u2019m so happy. (The Olympics) seemed like something big and abstract. I couldn\u2019t even assume that I would go to the Olympics, and now this is real and I got the spot for my country. I\u2019m so happy and I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever since Marsak started to skate, the Olympics has been his dream. Now he shares a connection with his skating idol Nathan Chen, who won the Olympics in Beijing three years ago. \u201cThe first Olympics I watched on TV was in 2010. When Nathan missed his short program in 2018, it was such a drama for me and I was so upset. Finally when he won the gold medal here in Beijing,I was such a fanboy and I was so happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar to Marsak, Yu-Hsiang Li of Chinese Taipei also had to wait to find out if he could go to the Olympics. The 18-year-old delivered a solid performance to\u00a0Eleanor Rigby<\/i>, landing all seven jumps in the free skate and receiving a total score of 216.98. Only in his second year as a senior, Li himself was surprised with how well he skated, and was hopeful that he might qualify for Milano Cortina. \u201cI can\u2019t imagined that I did so well in both programs. I felt nervous before but I just thinking about it as an ice show and that I feel good and I can show it to everyone, \u201d Li said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing to the Olympics is my big dream. It\u2019s very important for me, my coaches and my federation. It\u2019s a very big deal,\u201d remarked Li. It has been 27 years since Chinese Taipei\u2019s David Liu last competed, at Nagano in 1998.<\/p>\n
Davide Brain of Monaco was in the top five after the short program, but mistakes on the spins in the free skate lowered his total score to 216.12, narrowly missing the cut-off by 0.86. \u201cWhen I calmed down a bit more I\u2019ll review the program. Right now it\u2019s a bit frustrating being behind with such a good (short) program because of little mistakes that shouldn\u2019t happen,\u201d said Brain.<\/p>\n
Despite the disappointment, Brain took this experience as a learning opportunity. \u201cOverall I\u2019m very satisfied with the technical part, the jumps are where I wanted to be. I learnt from those mistakes on the spin and I know what to work on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Xiangxuan Kong Photo by Robin Ritoss Beijing\u00a0\u2013 The men\u2019s event closed the four-day\u00a0Skate to Milano on September 21. Individual neutral athlete Petr Gumennik, Donovan Carrillo of Mexico, Hyungyeom Kim of Korea, Kyrylo Marsak of Ukraine, and Yu-Hsiang Li of Chinese Taipei secured the five quotas for men. Petr Gumennik was in the lead after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[593,595],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-event-reports","category-olympic-qualifier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51557","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=51557"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51585,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51557\/revisions\/51585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}