Ilia Malinin in control after 'cleaner' short program
Olympic Champion Nathan Chen recaps the Men's Short Program from Milan, Italy and explains why the U.S. figure skating star could only be 'competing with himself' in the free skate
Video Transcript
Hey, everyone, Nathan Chen here.
We just finished the men's individual short program, and what an event!
There were many very impressive programs, really clean skates from a lot of the men.
Overall, just very impressed with the level of skating that we saw today.
Ilya had a great program.
He put down the same content that he was doing in the team event, but this time around was much cleaner, with a lot more ease, and really was the skater that we expected from him.
He did the same quad flip, triple axel, and quad less triple toe, but this time with all of them with a lot more flow, a lot more confidence, and it was really quite an impressive skate.
The rest of our US men did their jobs.
They did what they needed to do, and Andrew put down a really clean program with a quad toe, triple axel, and a triple-triple.
Max had a slight issue with his triple axel, but overall, very clean and put down what he needed to do.
So Ilya currently has a five-point buffer heading into the free program, and his free program is always packed with incredible technical elements, which means that as long as he competes against himself and he does the thing that he knows he can do, he should be in a really great spot for gold.
Another standout athlete was Yuma Kagiyama.
He had an excellent short program in the team event, but heading into this program, he was a little bit tight, a little bit cautious, and that was reflected in his triple axel.
He definitely has the chance to make up some points in the free program, but Ilya definitely has the technical advantage heading forward.
