Graham Watson for Fourth-Place Medal said the United States secured a bronze medal in the team figure skating competition. Following the second-place finish of Canada and champion Russia, the ultimate highlight of the competition was world championship ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who set a new world record with a score of 114.34 for team ice dancing.
ZAP2IT explains that the team figure skating is broken down segments, which are men's singles, women's singles, pairs and ice dancing. As each entrant perform a short program per category, winners will be whittled down to five to qualify for the free skate, or otherwise called long program. Citing an example, Ashley Wagner could perform for Team USA in the short program and have Gracie Gold compete for the long program, if the country qualifies.
In the Free Program Ladies segment, the performance of Team USA's Gracie Gold saw her scoring a personal best at 129.38, SB Nation said in its report. However, Gold was bested by Olympic darling 15 year-old Yulia Lipnitskaya, who managed to knock Gold out of the top spot to second place with a personal best score of 141.51.
For Free Program Men, Team USA's Jason Brown saw his score for his solid performance dropped down the leaderboard as veteran Russian representative Evgeny Plushchenko clinched the event, albeit some struggles, said SB Nation.
CNBC noted Russian's eagerness for their athletes to secure the championship in the Winter Olympics via its commentators. In its report, the news outlet said there were several incidents in the gymnastics events that one could observed how biased the local commentators were regarding the skaters' performances.
Former Olympic champion and gymnast Lidiya Gavrilovna Ivanova, who was commentator for the gymnastics events for the Rossiya-2 Sport Channel, said before Russian gymnast Viktoria Komova did her vault, "Vikochka (sweet Vicky), show these Americans how it should be done."
When US Olympic champion Aly Raisman took the floor next for her beam routine, Ivanova retorted, "I'm watching for her to mess up again."
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