By Johanna Bear<\/p>\n
Much like the men\u2019s event that preceded it, the ladies event at the 2015 Four Continents Championships was a wide\u00ad open competition that provided its fair share of highs and lows until the very last performance.<\/p>\n
After coming into the free skate in fourth place, Polina Edmunds displayed the kind of form that saw her bursting onto the national and international scene last season. Despite her triple flip\u00ad-half loop\u00ad-triple Salchow combination being called for a wrong edge and her standalone triple flip being deemed to not be on a clear edge, Edmunds landed five clean triple jumps and capitalized on the mistakes of the other skaters en route to the gold medal at her first appearance at the Four Continents Championships. She earned a total score of 184.02.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing into this I wanted to skate well because I knew it was a great opportunity for me to gain momentum. I expected myself to skate well and I did. I\u2019m happy I was awarded the gold medal for it,\u201d Edmunds enthused, \u201cI\u2019m excited for Worlds. Especially since I did well here at Four Continents. I have great momentum going into Worlds with skating great. I\u2019m looking forward to doing more now with my programs and working more on the artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Satoko Miyahara of Japan entered the free skate in first place and looked to perform her \u201cMiss Saigon\u201d program the way she did to win her first Japanese Nationals title earlier this season. However, a fall on her triple Lutz and a step out on her triple flip saw her hopes of winning fall away and she had to settle for the silver medal. Her total competition score ended up being 181.59 and she will look to regroup in the weeks between Four Continents and the World Championships in Shanghai in March.<\/p>\n
This season\u2019s Rostelecom Cup Champion Rika Hongo of Japan got called out on two under-\u00adrotations, one on the second jump of her triple flip-\u00adtriple toe loop combination and the other on her triple Salchow that was part of her double Axel-\u00adhalf loop\u00ad-triple Salchow combination. The rest of her \u201cCarmen\u201d free skate was clean, however, and she was able to skate to the bronze medal with a combined score of 177.44.<\/p>\n
Like the U.S. Championships a few weeks ago, 2014 U.S. Champion Gracie Gold came into the free skate in second place, but this time, a series of uncharacteristic jumping mistakes including popping her triple Lutz into a single and not being able to execute a triple \u00adtriple combination saw her fall to fourth place for the competition with a total score of 176.58. The favorite coming into Seoul, Gold will also look to improve before the World Championships so that she will be able to perform her \u201cPhantom of the Opera\u201d free skate to her full potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a difficult competition for me,\u201d Gold stated, \u201cI skated poorly in both segments of competition. I\u2019m sorry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s Zijun Li managed to use her \u201cMoon River\u201d program to secure a fifth place finish at Four Continents, which is her best international showing of the season after finishing sixth at Cup of China and seventh at the NHK Trophy. Other than one edge call on her triple Lutz, she skated cleanly for a top five result and a total score of 175.92.<\/p>\n
Canadian Champion Gabrielle Daleman skated a completely clean performance to \u201cEn Aranjuez con tu amor\u201d that moved her up from eighth after the short program to seventh where she finished the competition with a combined score of 167.09.<\/p>\n
Team USA\u2019s Samantha Cesario also had no falls in her \u201cCarmen\u201d free skate and amassed 166.76 points while connecting beautifully to the music in what she has announced will be her last usage of that program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really feel the character and am comfortable skating to the music,\u201d Cesario said after her free skate, \u201cThis was my last time doing \u201cCarmen\u201d and it felt good. I\u2019m happy it ended with this program.”<\/p>\n
Though not boasting a particularly deep field of competitors, the ladies event at the 2015 Four Continents Championships was interesting down to the last program as many of the skaters look to continue their momentum or look to improve in anticipation of the upcoming World Championships in Shanghai. It will be fascinating to see how the results in Seoul prove to mirror or go against those to come in several weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Johanna Bear Much like the men\u2019s event that preceded it, the ladies event at the 2015 Four Continents Championships was a wide\u00ad open competition that provided its fair share of highs and lows until the very last performance. After coming into the free skate in fourth place, Polina Edmunds displayed the kind of form…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-4cc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003","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=7003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7007,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7003\/revisions\/7007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}