On Saturday, history was made at the Winter Olympics men's singles figure skating as defending champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan claims his second Olympic gold and became the first figure skater in 66 years to win back-to-back.
Hanyu, 23, took the gold with a total of 317.85 points and performing to the tune from the film Onmyoji as Abe no Seimei, an ancient Japanese astrologer and philosopher. The program - first performed in the 2015-2016 figure skating season- is sentimental to Hanyu as it was the program that enabled him to break several world records. He did have two stumblings during his performance, but the routine was finished without deductions with a presentation score of 96.63 points.
When interviewed after his performance, Hanyu shared "I have no words right now. I am overwhelmed. I am just happy with my performance and my hard training and everything."
Following Hanyu is his fellow Japanese skater Shoma Uno who scored a total of 306.90 points and Spanish skater Javier Fernandez who scored 305.24 points.
Surprising many and giving pride to his countrymen is China's very own Jin Boyang, who ranked fourth in the competition, especially after his memorable performance in the Four Continents Championships. Many fans even said he could break records and come home with a medal.
Jin performed music from the Star Wars franchise and gave an astonishing program, but he fell down on the ice after failing smooth after a quad toeloop.His performance did cement China's best record in the competition since the country joined the Winter Olympics in 1980.
When interviewed by Xinhua after his performance, Jin said "I'm 20 and I know I have a lot of potentials. I will be working hard to stand on the podium at the next Olympics in Beijing."
Unfortunately, fellow skater Yan Han - who finished 7th in the previous Olympics in Sochi, failed to end his 2nd Olympic journey with a bang. After several injuries and surgeries, the skater narrowedly got into the finals after finishing 19th out of 24 qualifiers for the short skate and landed in 23rd place after failing to nail 4 of his eight planned jumps.
In his statement, Yan said "I'm relieved in a sort of way. I went onto the rink as an explanation to my own -- It's not easy for me to be here and I'm qualified into the free skating. I finished it, in a pretty bad way though. I'm happy I can be honest with myself and accept the fact."
He also adds "But I'm not a quitter. I will take a break and go back for training, day by day, even harder, for a better me."
