South Korean figure skater Lee Hae-in of Korea University won the bronze medal in the women's singles competition at her first International Skating Union (ISU) senior Grand Prix event of the season.
Lee earned 143.30 points in the free skate at the Cup of China, the third event of the 2026-27 ISU Grand Prix series, held Saturday at the Shenzhen Universiade Center in Shenzhen, China. She received 76.77 points for technical elements and 66.53 for program components.
Combined with her short program score of 67.49 on Friday, Lee finished third with 210.79 points, behind Japan's Mone Chiba (224.48) and Russia's Alexandra Ignatova (221.27), who competed as a neutral athlete.
It was Lee's first podium finish in the senior Grand Prix series.
Lee previously won two gold medals and one bronze in the junior Grand Prix series. After moving up to the senior level, she claimed silver at the 2022 Four Continents Championships, gold at the 2023 edition and silver at the 2023 World Championships. However, she had struggled to secure a medal in the senior Grand Prix series until Saturday.
Lee finally ended her medal drought with the help of a technically demanding triple axel, a jump involving 3½ rotations in the air.
After receiving a quarter-landing call on her triple axel in Friday's short program, indicating that the jump was about 90 degrees underrotated, Lee executed it cleanly in the free skate, earning 1.60 points in grade of execution (GOE) on top of its base value of 8.00.
However, her triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, with a base value of 10.10 points, received a quarter-landing call on the second jump, resulting in a GOE deduction of 0.84 points.
Lee then cleanly executed a triple salchow, earning 0.92 GOE points on top of its base value of 4.30, before completing a level-four flying camel spin and a level-three change-foot combination spin to finish the first half of her program.
In the bonus-scoring portion, Lee earned 0.38 GOE points for a triple flip-double axel-double axel sequence, which had a base value of 13.09 points.
She also earned 0.93 and 0.98 GOE points for her subsequent triple lutz and triple flip, which had base values of 6.49 and 5.83 points, respectively.
Lee received a level-four rating for her step sequence before concluding her performance with a choreographic sequence and choreographic spin.
(This article was produced with the assistance of AI. — Ed.)
