Oh! Cha Jun-hwan, silver medal with a 0.11 point difference, but just before the Olympics, 'the highest score of the season'... Milan is ready

*This content was translated by AI.

Cha Jun-hwan (25, Seoul Metropolitan Government), the star of the Korean figure skating men's single, won a silver medal in the final inspection stage ahead of the 2026 Milan-Cortina D'Ampezzo Winter Olympics.

Cha Jun-hwan scored 97.46 points in technical score (TES) and 87.27 points in artistic score (PCS) in men's single free skating at the '2026 International Skating Union (ISU) Four Continents Championships' held at the National Gymnasium in Beijing, China on the 25th (Korea time), receiving a total of 184.73 points.

Cha Jun-hwan, who finished sixth with 88.89 points in the short program the previous day, did well in free skating and succeeded in a major turnaround with a final total of 273.62 points. This is a personal best for both free skating and total scores this season. It is only 0.11 points behind Japan's Kao Miura (273.73 points), who took the top spot.

In this competition, Cha made a strategic choice. Instead of this season's program "Moulin Rouge," he brought up "Balada para un Loco," which performed well last season. He chose technical stability about a month before the Olympics.

The performance was close to perfection. Cha Jun-hwan, who scored 3.33 points in performance (GOE) by neatly succeeding in his first task, quadruple salco, gained additional points in the subsequent quadruple toe loop and gained early momentum. Since then, he has completed "clean acting" by handling jumps in the extra point section, including triple luts and triple axels, without mistakes. It also recorded level 4, the highest difficulty, in step sequences and change foot combination spins, which are non-jumping elements.

As a result, Cha Jun-hwan failed to regain the top spot in four years after winning in 2022, but he proved his competitiveness on the international stage by reaching the podium (3rd place in 2024 and 2nd place in 2025-2026) for the third consecutive year. In particular, he brightened the prospect of a medal in that he restored the stability of the high-level four-round jump just before the Olympics.

Lee Jae-geun (Surigo), who participated together, ranked 16th with a total score of 211.2 points, and Kim Hyun-gyeom (Korea University) ranked 17th with 208.92 points.

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*This content was translated by AI.