You Young wins women's figure skating gold at Lausanne 2020

South Korean figure skater You Young in a blue dress started skating to music from the soundtrack of Evita. She started her first jump 30 seconds after her performance started in the women’s singles figure skating at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics at Lausanne Skating Arena in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday. The 15-year-old jumped with her left foot, completed 3.5 spins and landed with her right foot. It was a flawless triple axel.

A triple axel is a high-level jump technique that even the figure queen Kim Yu-na (30) was not able to master and only 11 female skaters succeeded in completing this skill in a global competition. You was the first Korean female skater to land a triple axel in a short program at the 2019 Skate Canada International in October.

After that, she successfully landed a flawless triple lutz-triple toe loop and then a triple loop. As the last skater at the event, she made eight jumps for 3 minutes and 40 seconds. She scored 73.11 in the TES and 67.38 in the PCS, 140.49 in total.

“I was nervous before the performance, but I tried to think of it as training. I’ve been working hard after the domestic competition. I am happy that I made good results,” she said. “My goal is landing a quadruple jump at the Beijing Winter Olympics to be held in two years.”

You will return to Korea on Friday to train for the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships to be held next month in Seoul and the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships to be held in Montreal, Canada in March.


Kyu-In Hwang kini@donga.com