Kiss & Cry area.
Lu You and Xie Yunjun held hands tightly, interacting with the camera while waiting for the final score. Lu Tingsong sat next to Xie Yunjun, rubbing his thighs anxiously.
On the big scoring screen, a small five-star red flag slowly emerged.
CHN (China)
YUNJUN XIE/YOU LU
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS: 37.08
PRESENTATION (Program content score): 35.78
DEDUCTIONS: 0.00
SHORT PROGRAM: 72.86
The scores popped up row by row and finally settled on the total score.
Lu Tingsong was stunned for a second, blinked in disbelief, and then became extremely excited. He stretched out his arms and hugged Lu You and Xie Yunjun in his arms, calling them "uncle's good children" all the time, and he almost cried.
What did he see? 70 points! Their short program actually exceeded 70 points!
How long has it been since anyone in the Chinese pair skating youth competition managed to score over 70 points in the short program?
Three years? Or five years? Lu Tingsong can no longer remember, he only remembers that the outside world was pessimistic about the future of Chinese pair skating, saying that after the current veterans retired, China's glory in pair skating would no longer exist.
After the show, the audience responded enthusiastically, and with the support of the judges from China, Japan and Austria, the remaining judges were still unable to keep the scores down. Lu Tingsong and Jiang Yang had already prepared themselves for the short program score to be in the 60s, but no one expected that the final performance score would be so high, allowing Lu You and Xie Yunjun to directly jump to the top of the current ranking.
If you must ask how Lu Tingsong feels now, the only way to describe it is that a big pie fell from the sky halfway through his journey.
Who said that Chinese pairs skating was going to be a failure? Isn’t the light of hope here?
"Uncle, you almost strangled my male companion to death," Lu You hit his uncle's arm in the TV broadcast, "Can you be gentler?"
There was a burst of good-natured laughter from the audience.
Lu Tingsong quickly let Lu You go and wiped his face. Only after he brought Lu You and Xie Yunjun back to Jiang Yang did he calm down a bit and said with a silly smile, "I didn't expect that I would have the hope of winning a small medal in my first A-level competition."
In figure skating events, in addition to the final championship, runner-up and third place medals, in every major event, the organizers will also award a small medal to the top three skaters in the short program and free skating events, so that more skaters can experience the joy of winning medals, and it is also a recognition of the skaters' strength.
There are too many uncertainties in figure skating competitions, and no one can guarantee perfect performance in both the short program and the free skating. Therefore, the existence of small medals can be regarded as a kind of encouragement to the athletes.
Lu Tingsong was not being overconfident when he said that Lu You and Xie Yunjun could win a small medal. Up to now in the competition, they are the first ones whose short program score has exceeded 70. And according to the action choreography submitted in advance by the remaining players, the only ones who can compete with Lu You and Xie Yunjun are the Nan Yazhu combination and VA of Daye.
Unless a player suddenly performs exceptionally well and increases the difficulty of his movements out of the ordinary during the competition, Lu You and Xie Yunjun will definitely be in the top three in the short program.
The difficulty of Nan Yazhu's choreography seems to be about the same level as Lu You and the others. This girl is prone to breakdowns. If she fails to handle one thing well, it is possible that she will only get second place in the short program of the flower-growing competition this year.
Lu Tingsong felt like a dream just thinking about it.
The two groups of players who came out after Lu You and Xie Yunjun were also participating in the A-level competition for the first time. They were already nervous enough, and the high score of 70 points was a direct blow to their mentality. They did not have strong enough hearts and could not withstand the pressure. One group both fell to the ground during the single jump, and the other group was even more outrageous. When doing the spiral line, they had not turned twice when the male partner's hand slipped, causing her female partner to fly out under the action of centrifugal force and hit the baffle.
In the end, the referee couldn't bear it and gave it the lowest grade of one.
With the excellent performances of Lu You and Xie Yunjun as the precedent, the audience's emotions seemed much calmer in the next few performances. There was no more scene of people rushing to the railings and screaming when the show ended. However, when the contestants fell or successfully completed technical moves, everyone was generous with their applause.
At this time, a voice came from the radio: "On the ice, from South Korea, Yu-joo Nam & Nixon Jerry."
After the announcement, the atmosphere in the originally quiet audience seats took a 180-degree turn, and some ice fans immediately became excited. They were obviously well-trained Korean spectators who came to watch the game. They had a clear division of labor, some held banners, and some threw a giant poster over the railing, revealing a photo of Nan Yazhu printed on it.
Nan Yazhu, wearing a dark red open-back couture, skated into the ice rink to interact with her fans. The scene was somewhat like a South Korean idol's performance. If loud noises were not prohibited before the figure skating competition, the fans might have screamed and called her "Ouni".
"The fans of Nan Yazhu are really professional," Lu Tingsong stared at the big poster in the audience and touched his chin. "How about I go out and get one for Lu You and Xie Yunjun after the game? VA's fans also brought support posters, but we don't."
Jiang Yang thought about it and felt that Lu Tingsong was right. He could lose anything but not his momentum, so he said, "Okay, remember to pick a good-looking one and put it up in tomorrow's free skate. Print both of them. Don't split them up like South Korea did and only print Nan Yazhu."
Nan Yazhu's program this time is "The Phantom of the Opera", which tells a love story that took place in the Paris Opera House in France in the 19th century. This is also a theme widely chosen by major figure skaters, not only in pair skating, but also in single skating, many skaters have compiled related programs.
It is easy to see that Nan Yazhu plays the heroine Christine, but after the performance begins, the role positioning of her male partner Jerry becomes a bit confusing.
Generally, male skaters who skate to The Phantom of the Opera will put themselves into the role of the male protagonist "Phantom", but in fact, in The Phantom of the Opera, the true love of the heroine Christine is her childhood sweetheart Raoul, and the Phantom is just unilaterally, obsessively and madly in love with Christine.
The role played by Jerry at this time makes people feel very strange. He neither makes people feel the madness and elusiveness of the Phantom, nor makes people feel Raoul's pure and sincere love for Christine. The whole person is like an emotionless tool, whose only job is to cooperate with Nan Yazhu to complete this short program.
After half of the show, Lu Tingsong couldn't hold back any more: "Is this still pair skating? There was no eye contact between the partners the entire time. Are they allergic to eye contact or something? If they had chosen a piece that had nothing to do with love, it wouldn't have created such a dissonant effect."
"Because the judges really liked the Phantom of the Opera, the impression score went up first," Jiang Yang said, "It's a classic piece for figure skating, and all the skaters who have used it say it's good."
But infectiousness aside, Nan Yazhu's strength is still very good. Some people originally thought that since she has a brother who is not clean in speed skating competitions, Nan Yazhu might also play some tricks like saving moves and stealing moves in the competition. As a result, there is nothing wrong with Nan Yazhu's technical moves, and she can be regarded as a player with clean techniques.
That's right, most yellow-skinned players would not dare to steal the number of weeks, as this would just hand the braid to the referee to be caught.
Nan Yazhu's program was also 2A, triple twist and 3LoTh (triple lutz throw). Everyone on the GOE was an Asian athlete, so they could only compare who was worse but not who was stronger. Her skating was not as good as Lu You and Xie Yunjun, but her footwork was more complicated, so when the final scores came out, she was still a little higher than Lu You and Xie Yunjun.
Jiang Yang and Lu Tingsong had been prepared for this result. After all, Nan Yazhu had been in the youth group for four or five years. As long as she looked clean on the surface, it was normal for her to receive preferential treatment from the judges. What they were afraid of was that their wonderful performance would eventually lose to such a dull program, and the two children would not understand.
In response, Lu You yawned while wrapped in her down jacket, saying that there was nothing she couldn't figure out, she only cared about when the game would end so she could go back to the hotel to eat, sleep and play games.
As for Xie Yunjun, as long as Lu You can figure it out, there will be no problem for him not to figure it out.
Nan Yazhu's score is still very good, at least it is the best score she has had in the short program in recent years. Because of her height, she doesn't clean very often. This time she is going to face VA head-on, which was just talk. Her purpose is to take advantage of the last year of the youth group to make herself more popular, so that even if she can't make it in the adult group, it will be a good choice to take commercial performances or enter the entertainment industry in the future.
But after the scores came out, Nan Yazhu suddenly felt a glimmer of hope, thinking that she might really be able to fight VA today.
However, this small flame of hope did not burn for long, and soon Big Goose used his strength to prove what it means to be the eternal God.
Caveira and Anatoly took out their 3LzTh and raised their hands for 2A. Although the basic score of 3LzTh was not much higher than that of 3LoTh, the referee GOE gave it generously. In the Japanese station where there were no European and American players, Caveira and Anatoly, who had the nationality of Big Goose, were treated almost like royals.
Their final score was close to 80, achieving an astonishingly high score of 78.13.
The short program was not meant to be a scoring event. The difficulty of everyone's choreography was not much different, and the scores were very close. In this case, the big goose was still able to open up a five-point gap. Lu Tingsong could only complain: "The nationality advantage is so terrifying."
He watched VA picking up GOE like picking cabbages from the field, while his own child had a hard time getting some GOE from the referee. He once again denounced the ISU referees in his heart for being inhuman.
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