Cha Jun-hwan vies for S. Korea’s first medal in men’s figure skating

South Korean skater Cha Jun-hwan is just a few steps away from the country’s first Winter Asiad medal in men’s figure skating.

Cha scored a total of 94.09 points (TES: 50.58, PCS: 43.51) in the men’s singles short program of the 2025 Asian Winter Games on Tuesday at the Heilongjiang Ice Training Center in Harbin, China. His performance placed him in second place out of 16 skaters, 9.72 points behind Japan's Yuma Kagiyama (103.81 points). However, he has a strong lead over China’s Dai Daiwei (82.89) in third place. If Cha delivers a clean performance with no critical mistakes in the free skate on Thursday, he is expected to gain a medal, which will make him the first South Korean Asiad medalist in men’s figure skating.

Cha garnered an additional 5.14 points in the grade of execution (GOE) with his first two jumps, the quadruple Salchow and the triple Lutz-triple loop combination, during the short program. His execution score for these two techniques surpassed 4.78 points, which he earned at the 2023 ISU World Team Trophy short program when he recorded his personal best score of 101.33 points in the short program at the 2023 ISU World Team Trophy. It seemed possible for him to set a new record.

However, Cha made a “step-out” mistake on landing his final triple Axel jump, failing to keep a balance solely on his right foot and briefly stepping down with his left foot. The error led to a 0.8-point deduction. He usually gets about two points in the grade of execution (GOE) for his triple Axel. Following his short program, which fell slightly short of a perfect performance, he said, “I may be lying if I say that I have no regrets. However, I am satisfied with the fact that I concentrated on myself on the ice. In the free skate, I will do my best rather than being distracted by external factors.”


Bo-Mi Im bom@donga.com