No rethink for Chan after figure skating GP defeat

Three-time world champion Patrick Chan has vowed to stick to his "Olympic winning formula" despite his defeat at the Grand Prix Final, the last gathering of top stars before the Sochi Games. Japanese teen Yuzuru Hanyu topped the six-man field both in the short programme and the longer free-skate in Fukuoka, Japan, to hand the Canadian his first defeat of the Olympic season. Chan, whose short programme world record was broken by Hanyu overnight, skated a clean free programme on Friday but stopped short of overtaking the Japanese, who sprang back from a fall in his opening quadruple jump. Asked if he considers changing the programme to boost his bid for the first-ever men's singles Olympic figure skating gold medal for Canada, he replied: "No. Not at all." "I have the formula to success," the 22-year-old Chan said, "and I have the formula to win the Olympics just through putting it together and having it turn out the way I have been training it." "If you get older and experienced, you learn to appreciate just little things and that for me was skating clean in the long (programme) wherein nobody else did," he said. "So that's a check in my book." Skating to Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", Chan nailed an opening quadruple toeloop in a combination with a double toeloop, followed by another four-revolution toeloop. He executed five jump elements, including two combination jumps, in the free programme's second half in which bigger base points are assigned to jumps. Skaters can gain or lose points for the "grade of execution" in each of the jumps. Chan scored 39.87 points for the five elements, whereas Hanyu scored 56.53 points for his five jump elements in the second half, including three combinations. As a result, Hanyu, who turned 19 on Saturday, earned 193.41 points in the free skating to the music of "Romeo and Juliet" by Nino Rota, giving him a two-day total of 293.25, both his personal best scores. Chan finished second overall with 280.08 points, including 192.61 from the free. It was a turnaround for Hanyu, the 2012 world championship silver medallist whom Chan beat into second spot at their two Grand Prix events this season, Skate Canada and the Trophee Eric Bompard in Paris. The world's top stars were allotted just two of the season's six Grand Prix events. The top six finishers in each category in terms of placements qualified for the elite final. Hanyu's free and total scores were also just a few points short of Chan's world records of 196.75 and 295.27 set in Paris three weeks ago. Chan, who finished fifth in his Olympic debut at home at Vancouver 2010, said his choice of the set of Vivaldi's violin concertos was part of a "strategy going into the Olympics". "When I was a kid, driving to the rink, I heard it on the radio and I always loved it. It always made me happy to hear it. I thought it was a good direction to go into," Chan said, adding that the free result was a "bit of proof of that". "I didn't necessarily feel 100 percent committed or confident into the long programme but when I heard the music, I just kind of kicked it into gear," he said. "And I stuffed myself into training mode and competitive mode." Source: AFP