Canada’s Keegan Messing moved into the ninth tier of men’s figure skating competition after the short program late Monday night at the Beijing Olympics.
It is still a tour de force for the national champion, who arrived in China the day before. Since he had contracted COVID-19, he was stuck on Canadian soil for many days, before submitting four negative tests for the virus, which allowed him to take the plane to cross the Pacific Ocean.
Messing finally amassed 49.30 points in his technical score and 43.94 for the components, for a total of 93.24 points. He thus qualified for the second part of this competition, the free program, which will be presented on Wednesday evening.
American Nathan Chen took first place after the short program with an impressive total of 113.97 points.
The other representative of the Maple Leaf in the running, Roman Sadovsky, was unable to qualify for the free program, he who finished 29th in the short program, with 62.77 points.
