GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — Keegan Messing scored a personal-best 72.58 points to win the short program at the junior world championships Thursday while Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China won their second straight pairs title.
Messing, who was fourth at junior worlds last year, is more than 3.5 points ahead of Russia’s Artur Dmitriev, whose father was a two-time Olympic champion in pairs. Andrei Rogozine of Canada is third going into Saturday’s free skate.
Sui and Han won the pairs title despite two-footing their throw quadruple salchow and her botching their side-by-side double axels and triple toe loops. They finished with 167.01 points, more than 10 ahead of Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia. Narumi Takahashi and Mervin Tran of Japan, last year’s silver medalists, dropped to third.
