Cha Jun-hwan

Photo Credit: Flickr

South Korean professional figure skater, Cha Jun-hwan overcame a fall at the start of his free skate and successfully became the first South Korean man to win gold at the Four Continents figure skating championships.

While the 20-year old skated to music from the opera “Turandot,” he tumbled on his opening quadruple toeloop but managed to recover and scored 174.26 in his free skate, thus extending his short-program lead with a total of 273.22.

Cha is ahead of Japan’s Kazuki Tomono on 268.99 and another Japanese skater, Kao Miura, was third on 251.07.

The talented Cha was among a few skaters at Four Continents who will be sent to the Olympics next month. Meanwhile, U.S., Canada and Japan sent skaters who weren’t selected for the Beijing Games while China did not send any skaters.