Winter Olympics: Where are Hanyu Yuzuru's fans now? Can Ester Ledecka do the double-double? – Best of Beijing

BEST MOMENTS OF DAY 4 Hanyu lets down Team Fanyu Ad/> Anyone heard from the Fanyus? The passionate and ultra-defensive supporters of Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu were stunned into silence after their man dropped a howler in the short programme to derail his hopes of a third Olympic title on the spin. Instead of dropping a quadruple salchow with his opening jump, the two-time singles champion barely propelled himself off the ice – rotating just once in the air rather than the expected four. Beijing 2022Gu hits back, GB skaters find perfect blend, US athlete's epic journey — Beijing diary3 HOURS AGO In his defence, Hanyu insisted that his skate was caught in a small hole in the ice, denying him a perfect take-off.

«When I took off, I (stepped) in some hole — maybe, some other skater was doing a toe loop, or a flip, I don't know. But I was on a hole, so I couldn't take off for the first jump,» Hanyu said. As he wilted, Nathan Chen – the three-time world champion and likely successor to Hanyu’s Olympic crown – produced a world record display to sit on 113.97 points heading into Thursday’s free skate.

Hanyu is down in eighth, a whopping 18.82 points off his rival and over 10 points adrift of the podium. But before the Fanyus get too upset, there is still hope as this article explains… The double-double flame is lit Imagine being so good at a sport that you can just rock up at the Olympic Games after spending your preparation perfecting another discipline instead. That’s basically what Ester Ledecka has done this year, regularly ditching her favoured snowboard in pursuit of a sequel to one of the greatest stories in Olympic history.