Coquitlam’s Larkyn Austman skated her best short program of her international season, but it still wasn’t enough to qualify her for Thursday’s free skate at the Ladies figure skating competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Of the 30 skaters at the Olympic competition held at the Guangneung Ice Arena Wednesday morning local time, only the top 24 earned the opportunity to continue their quest for a medal. Austman’s score of 51.42 placed her 25th. That was just .04 points behind China’s Li Xiangning, who finished 24th.
The 20-year-old who trains at the Coquitlam Skating Club (she just celebrated her 20th birthday in South Korea) was philosophical about her truncated Olympic experience.
“Life will go on and I will get over it,” Austman said in a message posted to her Facebook page. “I had the time of my life out on Olympic ice and I wish it could have lasted a lifetime”
Austman told CBC reporter Paul Martini that rating her short program’s performance in Pyeongchang as the best of her season was a little misleading as her previous best “was a terrible skate.” That was at the ISU Ondrej Nepela Trophy event in Bratislava in Slovakia last September, where she scored a 42.51 in her opening skate.
At the Canadian national skating championships in Vancouver in January Austman was ranked sixth of 18 skaters after a difficult short program, but she was able to recover in the free skate to finish third behind the new champion Gabrielle Daleman and her predecessor, Kaetlyn Osmond. That earned Austman a spot on Canada’s Olympic team as well as a trip to Milan, Italy for the 2018 ISU world figure skating championships in March.
But in Pyeongchang, Austman won’t get the chance for a second-day comeback.
Skating to Main Herr, from the musical Cabaret, Austman fell while landing a triple toe loop on the back half of a required combination of two triple jumps.
Austman admitted she was nervous before taking to the ice in the biggest competition of her life so far.
“I knew coming into the Olympics that I would most likely only qualify for the long (skate) by a hair, but I never let myself think about,” she said. “I wish I could have shown the world my incredible long program.”
Austman’s poise after her fall impressed CBC skating analyst Carol Lane who said Austman “made the most of making an emotional connection with the judges,” as she made several passes by the scoring table looking directly at them.
“The next time she comes out the judges will remember her as the girl who skated to Cabaret,” Lane said.
Fellow analyst and former four-time world champion Kurt Browning said Austman can take solace that the remainder of her program after the early fall was solid.
“I’m going to checkmark this experience at the Olympics as a positive,” he said.
Only hours after her disappointment, Austman was already looking at the bright side.
“I’m so excited to make the best of the last few days I have in the Olympic village,” she said, adding she’s already looking forward to the world championships in Milan and the next Winter Olympics in Beijing, China in 2022.
