BOSTON – Spain’s Javier Fernandez defended his world title Friday, turning a daunting deficit into a lopsided victory when he skated flawlessly and training partner Yuzuru Hanyu struggled throughout his long program.
Fernandez cleanly landed three quadruple jumps and had the crowd on its feet before he finished his final spin to Frank Sinatra singing “Guys and Dolls.” He smashed his previous personal bests with 216.41 points for 314.93 total.
Hanyu settled for his second straight silver and Jin Boyang landed four quads to win bronze, the first individual world medal for a Chinese man.
Hanyu, who led by more than 12 points coming in, fell once and touched his hand down two other times in a performance that was tentative from the start.
He overcame two falls in his free skate in Sochi to win Olympic gold when Patrick Chan failed to take advantage of the opening. Fernandez, who like Hanyu is coached by two-time Olympic silver medalist Brian Orser, had no such trouble Friday.
Channeling Sinatra, the suspenders-wearing Fernandez was at his charming best, the crowd clapping along to this fancy footwork. Fernandez buried his face in his hands when it was over.
He said all he knew when he stepped on the ice after Hanyu was that “if I have a chance to win, I have to have a clean program.”
“And I did it,” he said, his voice trailing off.
Hanyu, the 2014 world champion, still earned 184.61 points for a total 295.17, strong scores for just about any other skater but well off his records.
A hand touched down on his opened quad salchow, and the mistakes kept coming. Hanyu fell on his second quad salchow, costing him the points of a combination. He stepped out of his landing on his second triple axel, resulting in just a double salchow instead of a triple in the combination. Then a hand touched down again on his final jump, a triple lutz.
He stayed hunched over for several moments after it was over, as dozens of flowers and stuffed animals flew onto the ice in a show of his stardom and the many Japanese fans in the crowd.
Jin became the first man to land four quads at worlds, but his scores are so low for choreography and interpretation that he still can’t match the world’s best. He scored 181.43 points for 270.99 total.
Chan, the three-time world champ who took last season off, dropped from third to fifth after a mistake-filled long program.
American Adam Rippon was sixth after a stirring skate to his Beatles medley that had the home crowd roaring.
Earlier, China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong took the lead after the pairs short program as they seek their first world title. Last year’s silver medalists scored 80.85 points to top defending champs Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada, who earned 78.18. Olympic gold medalists Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia were third with 77.13 points after taking last season off.