*This content was translated by AI.
The Korean figure skating men's single failed to advance to the free skate at the World Championships, reducing the gap of Cha Jun-hwan (Seoul City Hall). The number of tickets for next year's tournament has also been reduced to one.
Cha Young-hyun and Kim Hyun-kyum (Korea University) ranked 27th and 28th in the men's single short program at the 2026 International Skating Union (ISU) Figure World Championships held at the O2 Arena in Prague, Czech Republic on the 26th (local time).
Cha Young-hyun scored 70.92 points with 37.70 points in technical score (TES) and 33.22 points in artistic score (PCS), while Kim Hyun-gyeom scored 70.71 points with 39.22 points in TES and 31.49 points in PCS. The two players, who remained in the bottom half of the 36 participants, failed to qualify for the free skate, which is given to the top 24 players.
Initially, Cha Jun-hwan, who was ranked fourth at the 2026 Milan/Cortina D'Ampezzo Winter Olympics, was scheduled to participate in this competition, but Cha Young-hyun was selected as a substitute due to injury. However, as both players failed to advance to the free, Korea's World Championship qualification for the next season was reduced from the previous two to one. This is the result of the regulation that if the sum of the rankings of the countries in which two players participated exceeds 28, the right to participate will be reduced to one ticket.
Meanwhile, Ilya Malinin (USA), the "God of the Quad," who suffered a humiliating no-medal humiliation at the Milan Olympics, topped the short program with a personal high of 111.29 points. It is the green light for the third consecutive victory in the tournament following 2024 and 2025.
Adam Xiaoyingpa (France) came in second with 101.85 points and Aleksandr Celevko (Estonia) came in third with 96.49 points. Olympic silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama and bronze medalist Sato Soon (Japan) were ranked 6th (93.80 points) and 4th (95.84 points), respectively. Olympic gold medalist Mikayl Shaidorov (Kazakhstan) was absent.
The men's single free skating event will take place on Friday.
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*This content was translated by AI.
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