HARBIN, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Beijing Winter Olympics silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama of Japan delivered a near-flawless performance to top the men's short program at the Harbin 2025 Asian Winter Games (AWG) on Tuesday.

Skating to The Sound of Silence, the 21-year-old executed clean quadruple jumps and an Axel to earn 103.81 points, though his final footwork sequence appeared slightly tangled. "I'll focus on improving it with more training," Kagiyama said.

"In the free skate, I'll attempt a quadruple Axel this time, regardless of the outcome. At the very least, I want to take on the challenge," he added.

South Korea's Cha Jun-hwan completed one quadruple and three triple jumps to secure second place with 94.09 points, while China's Dai Dawei followed in third with 82.89 points.

"I performed at about 80 percent of my training level," Dai said. "Although I landed my hardest jump today, I made mistakes on the triple Lutz and Axel. These have been recurring issues in training, and unfortunately, I didn't resolve them in time."

Looking ahead, he added, "I hope to skate to my full potential first, and only then will I think about rankings."

China's other competitor in men's figure skating, Chen Yudong, fell on his opening jump and finished seventh with 67.52 points.

In ice dance, Japan's Utana Yoshida and Masaya Morita took the lead after the rhythm dance with 68.88 points. China's Ren Junfei and Xing Jianing trailed closely, just 4.59 points behind in second place, while another Japanese pair, Azusa Tanaka and Shingo Nishiyama, edged out China's Xiao Zixi and He Linghao for third place. Xiao and He finished fourth with 64.29 points.

Both Chinese duos set personal bests in their performances. Upon seeing their score, Xiao gasped in surprise. "This is the first time we've scored over 60 points in an international competition," she said.

Xiao and He recently won gold at China's national championships, but He believes they made significant improvements in Harbin. "We made breakthroughs in both style and movement today. The music speeds up in the latter half, requiring a more dynamic performance, and today, I felt that we truly expressed the music rather than being led by it," he explained.

"We were in high spirits and really in the zone," He added.

Uzbekistan's Ekaterina Geynish and Dmitriy Chigirev topped the pairs short program with 64.55 points, followed by Japan's national champions Yuna Nagaoka and Sumitada Moriguchi. DPR Korea's Ryom Taeok and Han Kumchol placed third with 56.68 points.

China's sole pairs team, Wang Yuchen and Zhu Lei, finished fifth out of six teams with a score of 52.05. Despite the result, Zhu remained optimistic. "We're here to learn from stronger competitors, especially the Uzbek pair, as their height is similar to ours. We hope to pick up new techniques from them," he said. Enditem

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