Yuzuru Hanyu left his fans in tears again with the highest-scoring short program in the world this season, taking a whopping lead at Rostelecom Cup in Moscow on Friday.
The double Olympic champion landed a quadruple Salchow, triple Axel and a quad toe loop-triple toe combination en route to 110.53 points. Hanyu previously had the world’s top short score of 106.69 from his Grand Prix season debut two weeks ago.
He leads Georgian Morisi Kvitelashvili by 20.59 going into Saturday’s free skate.
The pre-event favorites to join Hanyu on the podium were Canadian Keegan Messing and Russian Mikhail Kolyada, but both erred on all three of their jumping passes and sit seventh and eighth, respectively.