European Championships: Men short program

Javier Fernandez skated after Voronov and Kovtun who didn't perform at their best and had left the door wide open for the reigning European champion. Fernandez didn't completely seize the opportunity he was given: he opened with a stepped out quad salchow, then had a minor step out on his triple lutz-triple toe. However the rest of the program was near perfect nad a stunning triple axel in the second half of the program and the highest components of the competition helped him get an eight points lead over Voronov. a 89.24

Sergei Voronov started off his program with a gorgeous quad toe-triple toe combination, but then doubled his triple axel, planned in the second half of the program , that was preceeded by a very long preparation. Afterwards he nailed a triple loop and got 81.06. 

Michal Brezina had a chance of a lifelime considering how Voronov and Kovtun had skated. He started incredibly well, nailing a stunning triple axel and an almost unseen quad salchow. But then he spoilt any opportunity of being second he had by falling on the triple flip of the combination. He saved his ranking with the second best components of the competition. He scored 80.86.

Maxim Kovtun had quite a debacle. He was planning two quads but hasn't nailed any of those. The first one, a salchow, was meant to be in combination with a toeloop, but did a step out and touched down at the end of the salchow. He did a step out also on his quad toe, so that he wasn't able to do any combination at all. Those two elements brought his score down to 78.21 since they both received very negative GOEs due to the fact that none of them was either preceeded by a step or in combination.