By Kim Tong-hyung
Everything has been said and done. Kim Yu-na’s brilliant career has come to an end and she will merely go down as one of the greatest Olympians ever to have laced up a skate.
At the Sochi Olympics on Friday, Kim, figure-skating superstar and defending champion, completed her quest to retire in style at the age of 23, winning the silver in the women’s individuals.
Kim, who had a narrow lead of less than 0.3 points after the short program, received 219.11 points after the free skate to finish about 5 points behind Adelina Sotnikova of Russia who scored 224.59. Italy’s Carolina Kostner, the 2012 world champion, took the bronze.
Kim had put up a historic performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, where she laid waste to the field in taking the gold with a world-record of 228.56 points, edging silver medalist Asada Mao of Japan by a staggering margin of 23 points plus.
The competition was much closer in this Olympics with Sotnikova and Kostner putting up the performances of their lives and demanding Kim to bring something close to perfection.
Kim topped the short program with 74.92 points and Sotnikova and Costner kept things close by scoring 74.64 points and 74.12 points, respectively.
Sotnikova delivered a monster performance in front of her home crowd in the free skate, receiving 149.95 points from the judges, which proved to be too much for Kim to overcome.
Dancing to Adios Nonino by Astor Piazzolla, Kim seemed to be skating flawlessly, but lost to the Russian on the technical mark and ended her free skate with 144.19 points.
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