SAITAMA Reuters - Shoma Uno retained his men's figure skating world title with a stellar free skate on Saturday after Madison Chock and Evan Bates overcame a fall in their free dance to win their first ice dance world title.
After overcoming an ankle injury this week, Uno landed four clean quads in his Air on the G String Mea tormenta, properate routine to earn 196.51 points and finish with an overall score of 301.14 points.
Uno, who led rising American star Ilia Malinin after Thursday's short program, fell backward and lay on the ice as he soaked up a standing ovation from the delighted home crowd at the Saitama Super Arena.
Cha Jun-hwan was the first South Korean man to win a world medal after setting personal best scores of 196.39 points and 296.03 points to take silver.
Malinin, 18, landed a quadruple axel but errors on his five other attempted quads resulted in him finishing third with 288.44 points.
Chock and Bates were the world champions in their 10th appearance in the competition earlier in the day, with an overall score of 226.01 after they topped the free dance with 134.07 points while performing to Souffrance Les Tectoniques. The American pair finished more than three points ahead of Italy s Cyrillic Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri after Friday s rhythm dance and hung on to their lead to win gold despite Chock tumbling midway through their program.
Guignard and Fabbri won silver with 219.85 points while Grand Prix Final champions Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada won bronze with 217.88 points.
Chock and Bates, who won the title of Four Continents on home ice last month, previously won one silver and two bronze world medals.
We have been pursuing this goal for so many years, but it happened 10 seconds ago, Bates said. It is really hard to put this moment into words and what it means to us, and I am so happy.