History repeated itself for Coquitlam figure skater Larkyn Austman at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships that concluded in Milan, Italy over the weekend. And not the good history that got her to Milan and to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Just as she did at the Olympics, Austman finished 25th after skating her short program last Wednesday. That put her just outside the top 24 skaters who qualified to move on to Friday’s long program.
Austman’s score of 50.17 was just .46 behind Hungary’s Ivett Toth.
In Pyeongchang, Austman was just .04 away from moving forward to the long program when China’s Li Xiangning edged her out.
Xiangning was 26th after her short program in Milan and also didn’t qualify.
At an exhibition appearance in Gibsons between the two major competitions, where her second cousin, Daryl Austman, is a coach for the Sunshine Coast Skating Club, Austman said her coaches had rejigged her short program after her Olympic disappointment to improve her chances at the Worlds.
“I don’t like to downgrade my technical, but if it gets the job done it gets the job done,” she told the Coast Reporter, a sister paper of The Tri-City News.
In fact, in Milan Austman’s technical element score was almost two points better than Toth’s, but she faltered in her program component score and also received a one point deduction. The competition was won by another Canadian skater, Kaetlyn Osmond, who improved upon the bronze medal she won in Pyeongchang.
Austman skated her way to both international competitions when she placed third at the Canadian Skating Championships in Vancouver in January. There, she skated a personal best in a long program that wowed the judges and thrilled the hometown crowd to propel her from a disappointing sixth after her short program.
