By Canadian Press

Chen produces spectacular free skate to win gold at worlds

Mar 23, 2019 | 8:24 AM

SAITAMA, Japan — Defending champion Nathan Chen produced a spectacular free skate on Saturday to win the gold medal at the figure skating world championships.

First after the short program, the 19-year-old Chen made no mistakes and landed four quadruple jumps to finish with 323.42 points.

Chen opened with a quad lutz and followed with a quad flip. The U.S. national champion then added two quad toeloops, one in combination, to solidify his lead.

Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu also had a strong free skate with four quads but couldn’t erase a 12.53-point deficit and finished second with 300.97.

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American Vincent Zhou was third with 281.16 points. Keegan Messing of Sherwood Park, Alta., was 15th and Nam Nguyen of Toronto was 16th.

Hanyu came back from a right ankle ligament injury in November. He was similarly injured in 2017 and returned at last year’s Pyeongchang Olympics, where he became the first male figure skater to win consecutive Olympic golds since Dick Button in 1948 and 1952.

Olympic silver medallist Shoma Uno, the 2018 world championship silver medallist , was fourth.

Earlier, defending champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France won the free dance to win gold in the ice dance.

Papadakis and Cizeron, first after the rhythm dance, received 134.23 points for their free dance for a total of 222.65 and their fourth ice dance world title.

Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov of Russia were second with 211.76 points followed by Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue of the United States who moved up from fourth place to finish third with 210.40. Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje of Waterloo, Ont., were fifth.

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With files from The Canadian Press. More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Jim Armstrong, The Associated Press