Figure skater Cha Jun-hwan finishes 4th in men's singles
Cha Jun-hwan of South Korea performs his free skate in the men's singles figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics at the Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milan, Friday (local time). Yonhap
MILAN — Cha Jun-hwan finished fourth in the men's singles figure skating event at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Friday, topping his own record for the best performance by a Korean male figure skater but coming up just short of a medal.
Cha scored 181.20 points in the free skate at Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milan for his season-best total of 273.92 points. He had the sixth-highest short program score of 92.72 points Tuesday.
With one medal contender after another falling left and right, Cha finished only 0.98 point behind the bronze medalist from Japan, Shun Sato.
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan soared to an unlikely gold medal with 291.58 total points, after leading everyone in the free skate with 198.64 points. Yuma Kagiyama of Japan got the silver with 280.06 points.
Ilia Malinin of the United States, who topped the short program with 108.16 points, had a disastrous free skate to earn only 156.33 points and finished in eighth place with 264.49 points.
For his free program, Cha received 95.16 points in the technical element score (TES), which evaluates skaters' execution of jumps and spins, and 87.04 points in the program component score (PCS), which looks at skaters' choreography and overall artistry.
Cha was fifth at the Beijing Winter Olympics four years ago.
After Tuesday's short program, Cha sat 9.83 points behind third-place Adam Siao Him Fa of France.
Cha fell trying to land the second of his two quadruple jumps, a quad toe loop, after opening his free program, set to "Balada para un Loco" performed by the Italian singer Milva, with a clean quadruple salchow.
Cha quickly got to his feet and executed other elements cleanly, but his season-best score still kept him off the podium.
Cha had the fifth-highest free skate score. The fall on the landing of the quad toe loop cost Cha 4.75 points in the grade of execution. On the second of his two triple axels later in the program, Cha was called for an under-rotation on landing.
Long known for his sublime artistry, Cha led all skaters in the PCS.
Siao Him Fa only managed 166.72 points in a mistake-filled free skate to finish seventh with 269.27 points overall.