Undoubtedly the favorite at Ice Star in Minsk, 25-year-old World and European Championship medalist Mikhail Kolyada leads the men’s event after the short program.
Kolyada landed his opening quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination and a triple a triple axel on his way to a no-negative GOE performance. With a total program component score in the fifties, the 2018 Olympic silver medalist in the team event received a total score of 102.53 points.
Belarussian representative Konstantin Milyukov is second. The 26-year-old skater under-rotated his opening quad Salchow but successfully landed a triple axel and a triple Lutz-tripe toe loop combination. He earned a total score of 78.41 points
Alexei Mishin’s 17-year-old student Evgenii Semenko is third with a total score of 77.42 points. He began his short program performance with a quad Salchow – which was deemed under-rotated – and made an error on his triple flip-triple toe loop combination.
Multiple skaters from the original list of entries – including Georgian representatives Moris Kvitelashvili and Nika Egadze – withdrew from the competition.
The free skate will take place Sunday at 11:30 Minsk local time. Full schedule and list of participants is here.
Full short program results:
- Mikhail KOLYADA (Russia) – 102.53
- Konstantin MILYUKOV (Belarus) – 78.41
- Evgenii SEMENENKO (Russia) – 77.42
- Alexander LEBEDEV (Belarus) – 70.65
