ABC teen Chen claims gold at figure skating worlds

MILAN -- American-born Chinese Nathan Chen completed six quadruple jumps to lift the men's trophy at the ISU world figure skating championships here on Saturday, while China's Jin Boyang plummeted from 4th to 19th after numerous errors.

Chen, who turns 19 in 40 days, reeled off a quad Lutz, quad flip-double toe, quad flip, quad toe and quad toe-triple toe as well as a triple Axel and a triple flip-single loop-triple Salchow combination.

He set a new personal best of 219.46 points in free skate to total 321.40 points after also collecting a level four for his spins and footwork.

The US champion thus became the first American man to win the title since Evan Lysacek took gold in 2009.

"It's just a dream come true, it's something I have wanted to achieve my whole career and I'm just so glad I was able to do it," Chen said.

"Of course I don't want to see my competitors fail or do badly, I want them to be pushing me and pushing each other, but I'm glad I was able to do what I needed to do and I felt the audience really wanted a good performance and they motivated me to do it," he added.

Olympic silver medalist Shoma Uno of Japan, struggling with an ankle injury, scored 179.51 to add up to 273.77 overall and pulled up from fifth place to repeat as world silver medalist.

Russia's Mikhail Kolyada, two-time European bronze medalist, fell on the quad Lutz and the second quad toeloop to take 172.24 in free skate, but claimed the bronze of worlds on 272.32 in total.

Two-time world bronze medalist Jin crashed on his opening quad Lutz as well as the quad toe-double toe combination, the quad toe, the triple Lutz and double toe combination, and the triple Flip later on.

The 20-year-old Chinese, who finished the fourth in Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games last month, also under-rotated the quad Salchow and ranked just the 23th among 24 finalists with a score of 127.56 to total 223.41.

Another ABC besides Nathan Chen, Vincent Zhou, who was the 2017 world junior champion and stood in third following the short program, fell to 14th on 235.24 points after numerous errors too.

Later on Saturday, France's four-time European champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron delivered a beautiful dance to Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' and set a new highest score of free dance with 123.47 and 207.20 overall to be crowned at worlds.

The Olympic silver medalists in Pyeongchang collected 30 perfect 10 points from nine judges, and beating American Madison Hubbell/Zachary Donohue and Canada's Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje to the lower positions on the podium.

China's Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu, who failed to qualify for the Olympic ice dancing final last month in Pyeongchang, finished the 18th on 150.75.

The ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2018 conclude Sunday with the Exhibition Gala.