At 9:15 a.m. on February 14, the Beijing Winter Olympics Figure Skating Ice Dance Free Dance Competition was held at the Capital Gymnasium. In the end, the four-time World Championship champion, the French duo Papadargis / Caesaron, won the gold medal with a high score of 226.98. Wang Shiyue /Liu Xinyu finished 12th, creating the best winter Olympic result for Chinese athletes in this event.
The strong Chinese style of "Kung Fu Piano" makes the Chinese ice dance group Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu, dressed in turquoise competition uniforms, like two blue birds dancing on the ice. After a dance, Wang Shiyue's tears burst out of her eyes, and she hugged Liu Xinyu for a long time without letting go.
At the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 4 years ago, Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu did not enter the free dance competition. Four years later, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, they surprised everyone with a total score of 184.42 points in the two rounds, ranking 12th. Although there is still some distance to win the medal, this result has broken the best result of the Chinese team's ice dance program at the Winter Olympics (18th place in Albertville, France in 1992), setting a new record.
Wang Shiyue (left) / Liu Xinyu in the Beijing Winter Olympics Figure Skating Ice Dance Free Dance Competition on February 14, 2022. Photo by Cui Nan, a reporter from China News Service
In today's free dance competition, it is still the same set of actions in the previous figure skating team competition, Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu's play is more stable, not only skating more freely, but also more complete. The costume creativity of the two is based on Chinese landscape paintings, the male companion is the mountain, the female companion is the water, painted with Classical Chinese patterns, taking the intention of green mountains and green water. The competition venues with aqua blue, turquoise and blue as the main colors complement each other perfectly, which can't help but remind people of the dance "Only This Green" that was praised on the Spring Festival Gala stage.
At 111.01 points, Wang Shiyue / Liu Xinyu broke through themselves again, surpassing the 107.18 points of this set of actions in the previous figure skating team competition. At the same time, Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu's performance in the 12th place in figure skating ice dance at the Beijing Winter Olympics also set a new record.
"The ultimate goal and source of motivation for our training is to hope to refresh the best results in the history of Chinese ice dance in every competition." As Liu Xinyu said, I look forward to the figure skating combination of the two green plum bamboo horses to break through themselves again.
Red Star News reporter Ren Hongwei
Edit Bao Chengli
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