GANGNEUNG (South Korea) • Shoma Uno proved he will be a major threat to fellow Japanese Yuzuru Hanyu for the men's Olympic title after impressing during the figure skating team event yesterday.

Hanyu will skip the team event to give his body every chance of being at its best in Pyeongchang after suffering a serious ankle injury in the run-up to the defence of his Sochi 2014 singles crown next week.

Uno, runner-up to the Japanese ice idol at last year's world championships, produced a near blemish-free short programme to put Japan in the lead, outscoring his rivals by almost 15 points.

"It is my first time coming to the Olympics and I thought I would be very anxious, but I wasn't as anxious as I thought," the 20-year-old told The Japan Times.

"I thought I was going to make a mistake on the quad flip and I did, but I was able to forget about it."

Ukraine-born Alexei Bychenko put Israel in second place provisionally, with Canada third after Sochi double silver medallist Patrick Chan hit the ice twice.

The 27-year-old tumbled on his opening quad toe loop and again on a triple axel.

"It's not the best start I wanted, but I have the support of my team-mates," the three-time former world champion said. "They make me feel so much better even when it's not the best skate, they are holding me up and making me feel like I belong here. That's the best thing about the team event."

He was in good company, as American quad wonder Nathan Chen also slipped up. The 18-year-old gold-medal hope from Salt Lake City had both hands on the floor after missing a quad toe loop, bringing gasps from the crowd at the Gangneung Ice Arena. That left the Americans in fourth, with Chen's total over 22 points adrift.

"Definitely not a representation of who I am and what I can do," he said.

In the following pairs short programme, Canadian duo Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford took second behind European champions Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov from Russia to propel Canada to first on 17 points. The US finished the first round in the silver-medal position, three points adrift, with Japan in third.

The ice dancing short programme, women's short programme and pairs free will take place tomorrow.

The event concludes with Monday's men's free, ice dancing free and women's free programmes.

The Russian team, winners of the inaugural team event in Sochi four years ago, sit fourth in their Pyeongchang guise as neutrals with the country serving a doping ban.

Only selected Russian athletes deemed to be drug-free are allowed to compete in South Korea.

Dozens of Russian athletes banned from the Games yesterday withdrew their last-minute appeal to a Swiss court aimed at allowing them to compete in Pyeongchang.

Earlier, 47 Russians implicated in doping lost a final appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which sought to overturn the International Olympic Committee's decision to bar them from competing.

The IOC is based in the Swiss city of Lausanne, where a local court may have offered the Russians a final chance to force their hand.

They had an emergency hearing scheduled in Lausanne for 2pm, two hours after the opening ceremonies kicked off in South Korea.

"The motion for interim measures has been withdrawn and this afternoon's hearing is cancelled," the Tribunal d'arrondissement de Lausanne said in a statement.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE