‘Figure Prince’ Cha Jun-hwan won a bronze medal at the International Skating Union (ISU) Figure Skating Grand Prix, where he participated for the first time in the 2024-2025 season. Cha Jun-hwan received 171.93 points by successfully completing both quad (fourth rotation) jumps in the men’s single free skating of the ‘Skate Canada’ 2nd Grand Prix competition, which ended in Halifax, Canada on the 28th. Cha Jun-hwan, who received a total score of 260.31 points combined with the short program (88.38 points), took third place after USA’s Ilya Malinin (301.82 points) and Japan’s Shun Sato (261.16 points). This medal is Cha Jun-hwan’s sixth Grand Prix bronze medal in his career.
In the short program the previous day, Cha Jun-hwan only jumped one quad jump and came in fourth place, behind Malinin (106.22 points), Sato (96.52 points), and Yamamoto Sota (92.16 points, Japan), who placed two quad jumps each.
However, in the free skating on this day, Cha Jun-hwan perfectly performed the first jump of the program, the quad salchow, followed by the quad toe jump, earning additional points of 3.05 and 2.31 points, respectively. Meanwhile, Cha Jun-hwan beat Yamamoto (164.84 points), who fell once in the quad jump, and Sato (164.64 points), who fell twice, and came in second place in the men’s free skating, pushing out Yamamoto and taking the podium. First place went to Malinin (total score of 301.82 points), who took first place in both the short and free.
In the free skating, Cha Jun-hwan wore a dark red top to the lyrical tango music of Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Ballad for a Madman’. The previous day’s short program was a strong contrast to the performance in ‘all black’ clothing to the powerful beat of rock group Imagine Dragons’ ‘Natural’.
Cha Jun-hwan, who participated in this competition last year but suffered from ankle pain and finished in 9th place and had to give up participating in the subsequent Grand Prix, got off to a good start this season by winning a medal in his first Grand Prix. At the Shanghai Trophy, where he participated to check his condition before the Grand Prix competition, he successfully completed the quad toe jump, which had been judged to be insufficient in rotation, from his first Grand Prix competition. Ok’s specialty was performing the triple Lutz-triple loop combination jump as a triple Lutz jump alone. There was only a 0.85 point difference from second place, so if he had made a follow-up jump, he could have won his first career Grand Prix silver medal.
Cha Jun-hwan said, “I made a mistake, but I did everything I could in my current condition. “It will get better if we correct small mistakes and continue to improve the completeness of the program,” he said. He continued, “At first, the rink was a bit small, so it took some time to get used to it. Stadiums in North America and Canada are sometimes smaller. But I found a sense of how to jump. “I think it was a good experience not only for this game, but also for future games,” he said.
On the same day, Lim Hae-na and Kuan Yeh, who competed in the ice dance free dance, performed to the music of the movie ‘Cruella’ and took 7th place (106.45 points). They ranked 8th out of 10 teams (70.64 points) in the rhythm dance the previous day, and raised their final ranking by one place to 7th place with a combined final score of 177.09 points. The winner was Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Foriei, who received a total score of 214.84 points.
Reporter Lim Bomi [email protected]
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