SHANGHAI, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Peng Cheng and Jin Yang won the pairs figure skating gold medal at 2019 Shanghai Trophy here on Friday.
Skating to the music of Cloud Atlas, Peng/Jin delivered a nearly perfect performance in the free dance, setting a new season-best of 132.73 points. The runners-up of last season's ISU Grand Prix Final collected 209.85 points in total to top the podium.
"We really want to raise our national flag and play the national anthem in front of the home fans," said Peng, who finished all the spins and sequences elegantly on Friday.
"We improved a lot since last year. We will go back to analyze the problems and do better in the training," noted Jin.
Russian duo Aleksandra Boikova/Dmitrii Kozlovskii ranked second with a total score of 203.16, while another Chinese pair Tang Feiyao/Yang Yongchao took the bronze with 172.28.
The ladies singles competition witnessed the victory from Evgeniia Medvedeva, who led in the short program on Thursday. The Russian Olympic silver medalist scored 119.62 in the free dance despite a minor error during the skating, and totalled 191.78 points for the gold.
"The city of Shanghai is so busy and beautiful. I really love the atmosphere in the stadium," said the 19-year-old Medvedeva, who skated in China for the first time. "My warmup wasn't great. I think I did a good job tonight."
The highest score in the ladies free dance came from South Korea's Lim Eun-soo as she finished her performance smoothly for 121.77, which secured her a bronze with a total score of 184.64, two points less than Elizabet Tursynbayeva of Kazakhstan who got the silver.
Chinese skater Chen Hongyi ranked the fifth with a total score of 146.65 after falling twice in the jumps.
In men's singles short program, Italian skater Matteo Rizzo took the lead in 87.76, while Alexander Samarin of Russia trailed behind with 84.66.
China's Jin Boyang, the two-time worlds bronze medallist, made several mistakes in his jumps to rank fifth with 70.71, a far cry from his season-best of 101.09.
"I was a little bit loose and not fully prepared. I wish I could be concentrated to be my best tomorrow," said the 22-year-old, who finished fourth at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games.
In addition, Team Helsinki Rockettes from Finland dominated the synchronized skating with 143.61 points, beating the second-placed Team Ice on Fire of Italy by 74.31 points. Team Unity of Australia placed third with 60.80 while Team Ice Pearl of China ranked fourth with 54.78.