Nathan Chen retains world title

SAITAMA, Japan, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Nathan Chen of the United States retained his men's singles world title at the Figure Skating World Championships here on Saturday. Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu settled for silver.

Chen, the All-American champion this season, performing to the music of Land of All by Woodkid, was not affected by skating after home favorite Hanyu and delivered a strong free skate. Chen opened with a clean quad Lutz, and then followed with a quad flip, quad toeloop and a triple Axel. He was almost flawless and scored 216.02 points, combining 323.42 to win the title.

"It's always an honor to be able to skate with Yuzuru Hanyu, and to skate after him is an even greater honor," said Chen. "This is my third time being in this arena, I came earlier in the season and didn't have the greatest skate, and to be able to come here and put the skate out that I did today, thank you so much for supporting me."

Chen was nearly 23 points clear of Hanyu, who fell in his short program and had to make it up from third place. Hanyu, dancing to the music of Origin (Art on Ice by Edvin Marton), landed the opening quad loop. He under-rotated on his quad Salchow and landed unsteadily. His following quad toeloop, quad toeloop and triple Axel combination were superb. The two-time world champion scored 206.10 in free skate, and 300.97 overall, moving up from third to the second.

Vincent Zhou of the United States came third with 186.99 in free skate and 281.16 overall. Japan's Four Continents champion Shoma Uno came fourth in 270.32, while China's Jin Boyang, a two-time world bronze medallist, collected 262.71.

Zhou didn't expect his bronze.

"That felt incredible, everything just came together today. The jumps, the performance, and to have the opportunity to do all that on such a big stage and in front of such a huge supportive audience is just incredible," Zhou said.

"I'm really proud of myself, the effort that I put in, the focus that I put in, staying in my own bubble."

China's Jin, who fell in his short program, moved up from ninth to fifth after a nearly clean performance.

"The free skate gave me confidence," said Jin, who took a silver in Four Continents this season. "I skated well today. Now I just want to have some rest."

"The season is hard," he added. "I was almost exhausted. Next season I will try to improve my PCS (program component score) and I hope I can get 10 points more in free skate."