The women's figure skating free skate final came to a shocking end at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Gold medal favorite, 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva, missed the podium after struggling during her performance, keeping the Russian Olympic Committee from a podium sweep and paving the way for a medal ceremony many thought wouldn't happen as a doping scandal surrounding Valieva overshadowed the women's event.
Valieva entered the free skate in the lead, but finished in fourth behind fellow ROC skaters Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova and Japan's Kaori Sakamoto.
Shcherbakova won gold in the competition while Trusova took silver. Sakamoto won the bronze.
To say Valieva struggled in the free skate would be an understatement. After finishing in first in the short program, the 15-year-old had two falls and two stumbles in the free skate. Her total score of 224.09 put her in fourth.
Shcherbakova did not score as high as Trusova in the free skate, but her short program tally of 80.20 helped her to the medal. In the free skate, she notched a 175.75, bringing her total to 255.95.
Trusova's difficult free skate routine included five different quad jumps, but the risk was worth it. She was given a score of 177.13, putting her total at 251.73, which catapulted her towards the top of the leaderboard.
Sakamoto finished with the third-best short program and free skate scores, fittingly ending the event in third as well with a total score of 233.13.
The United States had three figure skaters performing, but all three of Alysa Liu, Mariah Bell and Karen Chen fell short of the podium.
Liu had an excellent showing in her free skate program, recording a score of 139.45 while performing to "Violin Concerto in D."
Her two best jumps in the routine were the triple lutz-triple toe loop and triple lutz-single euler-triple salchow, which scored 11.20 and 12.80 points, respectively. It increased her total score to 208.95, finishing in seventh.
Bell put together a strong performance in the free skating program with a score of 136.92, skating to the song, "Hallelujah."
She had very few errors in her routine, and her best jump of the routine was a triple lutz-double toe loop-double loop, scoring her 9.45 points. Combined with her 65.38 from the short program, it gave her a total of 202.30. Bell ended up in 10th at the end of the competition.
Chen's routine had a number of technical mistakes, including a fall on her final jump in the routine. She received a score of 115.82, which when added to her short program score 64.11, gave the American a total score of 179.93, good for 16th.
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