The 22-year-old made too many mistakes in the short program. The defending champion delivers the big show.
The German figure skating champion Nikita Starostin missed the Kür-Finals at the World Cup in Boston and thus the quota place for the 2026 Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The 22-year-old from Dortmund could not exhaust his potential in the US state of Massachusetts and despite the best of the season of 70.72 points in the short program only ran in 28th place. The top 24 contest the freestyle on Saturday (11:00 p.m./Discovery+).
“A big mistake cost me the final,” said Starostin disappointed, after he had to overrun at the end of the combination and put it in the ice when he had the fourth World Cup participation in the triple toeloop. Already at the European Championships in Tallinn at the end of January, he had missed the final move, and the newly rehearsed program for the song “Follow Me” of the English rock band Muse did not bring the hoped-for ease.
At the “half -time”, the top favorite and defending champion Ilia Malinin from the USA with fabulous 110.41 points. In his world record at the World Cup title last year (a total of 333.76 points), Malinin won 107.25 points in the short program. The second is the Japanese Yuma Kagiyama (107.09) in front of the Kazakh Mikhail Schaidorow (94.77).