'Picture-perfect'
By Kwon Ji-youn
Kim Yu-na, the defending women’s figure skating Olympic champion, practices at the Coastal Cluster training venue in Sochi, Russia, on Monday. / Yonhap
At midnight on Wednesday (KST), figure skating megastar and defending ladies’ champion Kim Yu-na will kick off her second and last pursuit of an Olympic gold medal in the much-anticipated short program.
Yes, she has competition — Yulia Lipnitskaya of Russia and Asada Mao of Japan will also appear in the ladies’ short program, as will Gracie Gold of the United States. But Kim seems unruffled by her competitors, although the media has been debating whether Lipnitskaya, the 15-year-old prodigy who laid waste to the field in the team event, is a serious threat to her bid for a repeat.
Kim took part in the official training session at the Iceberg Skating Palace on Sunday, where she skated to “Send in the Clowns.” And according to those who were there with her, she was flawless.
She began with her signature triple lutz-triple toe combination, followed by an accomplished triple flip, flying camel spin and double axel. Her layback spin, step sequence and combination spin were solid.
Kim arrived in Sochi on Feb. 13 in great condition, and within two days, she had her long program down pat. On Feb. 15, she took a day off to watch the short-track speed skating competition with fellow skaters Lee Sang-hwa and Park Seung-hi.
Asada, on the other hand, means business. She has been training at a skating rink in Yerevan, Armenia, where skaters are not limited in the number of practice hours.
Asada, who is determined to dethrone Kim, also made use of the official training session at the Iceberg Skating Palace on Sunday, where she practiced her long program, which includes her signature triple axel, a difficult jump that entails three-and-a-half rotations. She landed on her feet, but was still rotating when she landed on the ice.
Asada placed third in the team event early last week, and was not pleased with her performance. She fell while executing the triple axel and struggled with her triple loop-double loop combination jump. She finished with 64.07, a score 8.83 points short of Lipnitskaya, who finished in first place. Lipnitskaya went on to receive 141.51 points in the free skate.
Asada’s main weakness is her mental state. She often succeeds in performing a clean program during training but repeatedly flounders in competition. Kim, on the other hand, is impossible to read. She appears impassive during training, but in competition, her passion and execution are second to none, as is her flair.
Lipnitskaya was training in Moscow and arrived in Sochi Monday.
Should Kim succeed in defending her gold medal on Friday after the long program, she will become only the third woman — after Norway’s Sonja Henie and Germany’s Katarina Witt — to repeat as Olympic champion.
Kim scored 227.86 at this year’s Korean national championships, and seems the skater she was at the 2010 Vancouver Games, where she stunned the world by taking the gold with a world record of 228.56 points.
At this year’s Games, 30 skaters were divided into five groups of six based on world rankings. Kim, who was sidelined from several international competitions last season, ranked 15th out of 30 and will appear in the short program early Thursday morning as the fifth skater of group three.
Lipnitskaya and Carolina Kostner will skate in group five, and Asada will skate last.
Also to appear in the short program are 17-year-olds Kim Hae-jin and Park So-yeon, who will be making their Olympic debut. Park will skate in group one and Kim, in group two. The two hope to succeed Kim once she retires from international competition. Kim has already ruled out a three-peat and will not compete at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.