Habin CHOI (KOR) | Junior Men Short Program | Gdansk 2025

Our next skater represents Korea, Ha-Been Choi. Seized the pass at 77.76. That's a good score, Mark. Yeah, that would be a very competitive score. And he's the first of the real contenders for the final, following the silver medal that he achieved in Varese. He's already making some history for Korean men skating with the quadruple jumps. No quad in this program, but hoping for another clean skate. Korea's Ha-Been Choi. Ha-Been Choi, representing Korea. Again and again, and I find it so interesting, Ted, to see this skater, because Korea's male skaters, Min-Ki Seo, Yun-Hwan Cha, so wonderful, primarily for their component scores. This young man, though, he's giving us tech score, energy, and confidence. Well, as you said, first of all, his technique with his jumps, he's so quick in the rotation, so fast, so solid, and that's great, and that's what makes him really strong as a junior. But he's also, as you said, still 15-year-old in his composition. Not so much in the skating skills, that's beautiful, it's all there, but he has this beautiful, melodic piece of music, and although he skates to it, he doesn't connect to it. Okay, that sounds really critical. Wonderful skater, triple lutz, triple toe, triple axel, beautiful. And that's all there, and gets all the credit. Once he connects more to the music, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, watch out. Yes, because there is going to be, as we see, the difficult blade feature, there's going to be a comparison. Havanchway, with this performance, has absolutely delivered a consistency that now makes us believe in him as a junior Grand Prix final participant. And then he will be against, you know, the likes of Minkuso, Ryo Nakata, and it will be definitely the program component scores, particularly the presentation, I think, for Havanchway. But we'll see, hopefully, in the free skate, the quads that he has. I've seen him do quad flip, I've seen him do quad lutz, he's got other stuff. Well, because he's so, so quick in rotation, and he's so tight in the air, there's, you know, really, he doesn't, you know, he's sort of all organized for the kiss and cry shot. And it was good to see his coach on the right hand, I don't know if his name was Kim or Mintuk Kim, I'm not sure the name of his coach, but just before the program, he was having fun backstage with her, and we could see that joyful playfulness. That's true. Let's take a look at the short program scores. Season's best, 78.53. She goes, whoa, and that moves him into first place. That's a six-point lead over Ian Vila from Switzerland.