Winter Olympics women's figure skating: 15-year-old Alina Zagitova wins gold – as it happened

You can read a full report from today’s action here:

And follow the remainder of the day’s action in Pyeongchang here:

But let’s be clear about one thing. You can break out all the spreadsheets you want. (I finally closed mine.) You may hear some grumbling that the Russian skaters gamed the system.

Here’s the bottom line: The Russian skaters executed. So did Osmond, and so did the Japanese skaters.

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The Americans did not. Each of the three skaters made significant errors.

Tennell and Chen will surely be back. They’ll have some work to do. And maybe there’s an 11-year-old American out there ready to be a 15-year-old gold medalist like Alina Zagitova.

This time belongs to Zagitova, Medvedeva and Osmond. And they deserve it.

So is that it? We’re done? Awww. Thanks to everyone for reading and for the email and Twitter encouragement. This has been a great ride. Follow me at @duresport, where you’ll see entirely too much nonsense about soccer but also an alert when I’ll be back in the Guardian live-blogging seat again.

Good night, all.

My favorite email comment comes from one Jean Wan, who suggests a cap on jump bonuses: “Cause what I’m watching now ain’t skating. It’s ice hurdles.”

And yes, if you were to show Zagitova’s program and Medvedeva’s program to a group of people without explaining the math, I think 90 percent of people would say Medvedeva’s was better.

The ISU will need to tweak some things.

1. Zagitova (OAR), 239.57
2. Medvedeva (OAR), 238.26
3. Osmond (Canada), 231.02

Medvedeva actually tied Zagitova in the free skate, each with 156.65. The short program makes the difference.

The veteran Kostner (Italy), in her fourth Olympics, takes fifth.

The Americans are ninth (Tennell), 10th (Nagasu) and 11th (Chen).

The required change of pace in the music works for her. It switches to some piano chords with a distinctive rhythm, and she plays to it well.

She lands a couple of flawless combos and a dazzling sequence of spins. Artistically, she’s light years ahead of Zagitova. (Yes, I realize I’m saying that after not liking the music in the first half of the program. That’s how good the second half was.)

It’s going to be 1-2 for Olympic Athletes of Russia. We’ll see about the order.

She’s only 18. She’s the two-time defending world champion. She’s battling a fellow Russian who’s even younger, and we’re hearing stories from the broadcast crew of upcoming juniors who sound like the next Nuke Laloosh. (Watch Bull Durham, even if you don’t like baseball.)

She lands an early unplanned combo. The music from Anna Karenina frankly seems distracting to me.

That previous personal best again: 142.34. The new personal best: 152.15.

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With Evgenia Medvedeva the last skater left, the podium places are:

Zagitova (OAR), 239.57
Osmond (Canada), 231.02
Miyahara (Japan), 222.38

Osmond will get a medal.

Osmond’s triple flip draws an ovation. Then she hits a triple-double-double. Then the double axel. This is going to be close.

She’s skating to Swan Lake and it works. Riveting program. Huge roar from the crowd. This has to be ahead of Miyahara, right?

Osmond also lands the double axel-triple toe. But she steps out of the landing on a triple lutz. Is that too much of a mistake to overcome?

By the way, I do see all the email flying in, and thanks very much. I’ll answer some a bit later.

She needs 160.71 for the lead and 143.52 to move into second and clinch a medal. Her personal best is 142.34.

Bang. Triple flip-triple toe. Game on.

Zagitova’s technical score smashes the 80-point mark. This isn’t even the same sport as what we saw in the first group here.

Free skate score: 156.65, just shy of her personal best of 158.08.

Zagitova (OAR), 239.57
Miyahara (Japan), 222.38
Kostner (Italy), 212.44

Double axel-triple toeloop, check.

Triple flip-double toe-double loop, check.

Triple lutz, check, and she adds the triple loop she abandoned earlier. So she’s on course.

There’s apparently music playing and choreography to consider, but that hardly seems to matter.

Zagitova is just 15. She’s the European champion and the Grand Prix Final champion. She won the World Junior Championship last year.

Into the jumps we go ...

Triple lutz-triple loop ... no! Just the triple lutz.

And she won’t be jumping for a while because she’s putting all the jumps she can into the second half of the program for the bonus. So just enjoy Don Quixote and a few spins.

Miyahara (Japan), 222.38
Kostner (Italy), 212.44
Sakamoto (Japan), 209.71

I don’t know how Sakamoto only got 136.53 on the free skate, barely ahead of Sotskova, but there you go.

The Americans are now 6-7-8.

And here we go ...

Sakamoto doesn’t have the artistry in my stubbornly subjective opinion. But she makes every jump looks easy -- until a triple loop with an awkward landing.

She has a personal best of 142.87. She won’t get that, but she’ll probably bump past Kostner into second with the big three to go.

Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto is skating to ... a bunch of glockenspiels. She lands a triple flip-triple toe with little difficulty. (I know -- easy for me to say.)

She may improve on her sixth-place finish at the Winter Youth Olympics in 2016. She was third in the World Junior Championships in 2017.

Kostner gets a 139.29 in the free skate, 212.44 overall.

Podium with four skaters to go:

Miyahara (Japan), 222.38
Kostner (Italy), 212.44
Choi (South Korea), 199.26

Italy’s Carolina Kostner isn’t just the second skater to skate to Debussy today. She’s a four-time Olympian with a bronze medal from Sochi and a world championship in 2012.

But she doesn’t have the leaping ability to match the Russian skaters (or the Japanese or the Americans). So a stumble on the landing of a triple loop, causing her to cancel the second part of the combo, will be costly.

She’s simply not landing very well. She fights her way through a combination, and she’s only going to land two combos while others land three.

But it’s all very pretty. And you have to be impressed that she has managed to hang on with all these young spring-loaded skaters bouncing onto the scene.

And it’s a new personal best of 146.44. The total is 222.38. Tons of pressure on Canada’s Osmond now and maybe even on the OAR skaters.

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Japan’s Satoko Miyahara shouldn’t be overlooked. She came in her in fourth place. Her personal best in the free skate is higher than Osmond’s. And she simply came out and did everything she planned to do with very little in question. Her technical score is by far the best we’ve seen, and it’s a good-looking program.

She punches the air when she finishes. And the judges aren’t finding anything to downgrade.

We have a contender.

I’ve added up the base value of the planned jumps for the top three in the standings and the three Americans:

Nagasu 52.1
Zagitova 46.1
Tennell 45.1
Osmond 44.4
Medvedeva 43.9
Chen 43.9

I haven’t figured in the 10 percent bonus for jumps in the second half of the program. Assume that’ll add 3-5 points to Zagitova’s total.

So it’s not as if what the Russians are doing is simply unbeatable. Nagasu could certainly match their jumps. It just didn’t happen tonight, and it hasn’t happened for U.S. skaters in quite a while.

I did miscalculate about the top 10. With Daleman falling down the standings (currently ninth, likely to finish 15th), the USA will get two and possible three skaters in the top 10. But it’ll take some major mistakes by the last group to get anyone higher than ninth.

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Current standings with six skaters to go:

1. Choi (South Korea), 131.49 / 199.26, up from 8th
2. Sotskova (OAR), 134.24 / 198.10, up from 12th
3. Tennell (USA), 128.34 / 192.35, up from 11th
4. Nagasu (USA), 119.61 / 186.54, had been ninth
5. Chen (USA), 119.75 / 185.65, had been 10th

Then it’s a long way back to Tursynbaeva (Kazakhstan), who’s likely to finish 12th. Then Kim (South Korea), Rajicova (Slovakia) and the unfortunate Daleman (Canada) just ahead of Hendrickx (Belgium) and Craine (Australia).

The good news: Nagasu was terrific in the team event. She landed the triple axel and racked up 137.53 points in that free skate.

The bad news: After finishing fourth in the Olympics as a 16-year-old in 2010, her return to the women’s event has not gone well.

This is a 119.61. Total of 186.54, taking the place between Tennell and Chen.

The commentary crew speculates about the possibility of turning a double axel, the lead jump of a combination of three, into a triple axel. She does not. Her technical score has a big 0.00 by the first element.

Then a triple lutz-triple toe combination becomes a single lutz.

This is officially a wipeout for the USA. Might not get a skater in the top 10.

The triple axel is up first. She’s 1-for-2, and ...

She’s 1-for-3. Didn’t even come close. She did a half-revolution instead of three and a half. That’s 8.5 points gone.

Choi moves into first place with a personal-best 131.49 in the free skate and a total of 199.26. Weir thinks he spotted an underrotation the judges missed.

Choi makes up for the missing half of the combination late in the program, and it’s very good. She was eighth coming into the free skate. You don’t suppose she could sneak up on the podium, do you? It would still take some mistakes by those ahead of her, but this is a pretty good effort. Her triple lutz-triple toe-double toe is checking in at 13.16 points, which is the highest element score I can recall so far today.

South Korea’s Dabin Choi gets the expected home-ice roar. But she only does half of her opening triple-triple. Nails the double axel-triple toe, though, and it’s a stirring program to music from Doctor Zhivago.

The crowd is clapping along. Not quite in rhythm. That’s not going to help.

Daleman breaks out in tears at the finish. Let’s not even mention her score until the end of Group 3.

You don’t get a World Championship medal on a fluke. She’s terrific. This wasn’t her day.

The crowd is groaning now, then cheering her on. She’s fallen twice more. The 2017 World Championship bronze medalist is having a nightmare skate.

The rest of this will be for pride.

And it’s Rhapsody in Blue. Nice.

She opens with a triple toe-triple toe. She adds a rotation after she lands, which is probably a mistake, even though she made it look cool.

Then she falls on the triple lutz. And stumbles a bit on a triple flip. The music seems to be mocking her.

Tennell’s personal best would put her in first place. She probably won’t get that, given the stumble on the combo. That jump and the next one get marked down as underrotated. A triple lutz has a base value of 6.0, and she gets marked down to 2.72. Might as well have fallen.

Oops ... 2.62. These judges are probably still finding ways to mark down Michelle Kwan’s free skate from 2002.

Scores are: 128.34 for the free skate, 192.35 total. Behind Sotskova, ahead of Chen.

The choreography to music from Cinderella simply works.

She stumbles a bit on the second half of a double axel-triple toe combination but remains upright. Then she puts a hand down on her next jump but rallies with a strong three-jump combo. The rest of them are pretty good as well, and the spins are world-class.

She was brilliant in the national championships. She never ever falls, except in the short program.

Bang. That’s how you do a triple-triple, folks.

She never quite managed to add in that remaining combination jump, which basically means she did one fewer jump than planned. By my figuring, the jumps she wound up doing are worth about five points fewer than what she had planned, and the execution wasn’t great. The fall is a mandatory point off.

Incidentally, I’m getting some email in response to my Weir and Lipinski “greatest cultural export” comments. One person agrees wholeheartedly. Another is aggressively ... well, rude.

Chen gets a 119.75 in the free skate. She falls behind Sotskova overall.

Chen looks a bit like she’s doing semaphore in her spin. But those are solid Level 4s.

The jumps, though, just aren’t cutting it. They’re getting yellow boxes for “review this.” And then she outright falls.