Kaetlyn Osmond Wins World Figure Skating Championships 2018 Ladies Free Skate

Canada's Kaetlyn Osmond took gold in the ladies event at the 2018 ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Milan on Friday after a flawless performance in the free skate.

The 22-year-old scooped top spot ahead of Japan's Wakaba Higuchi and Satoko Miyahara who took silver and bronze. Olympic champion Alina Zagitov finished out of the medals and down in seventh place.

ISU Figure Skating showed the final results:

Osmond began the day in fourth after Wednesday's short programme but pulled it out of the bag with a free skate performance that netted 150.50 points, per Skate Canada:

The 22-year-old said afterwards it was one of her best skates of the year, per ISU Figure Skating:

Zagitova had been the big favourite going into the competition after victory at the 2018 Winter Olympics and was in contention for the gold after finishing second in the short programme.

However, the 15-year-old Russian could not find the form she showed in Pyeongchang and slipped out of the podium places with her free skate. NBC's Nick Zaccardi explained where it all went wrong:

It was also a great day for Japan with both Higuchi and Miyahara on the podium as they profited from Zagitova and overnight leader Carolina Kostner being unable to maintain their form. Sports journalist Beverley Smith was impressed with Higuchi:

America narrowly missed out on a medal with Bradie Tennell coming home in fourth place while Mirai Nagasu finished out of the top 10 in 11th place.

The action switches back to the men's event on Saturday with the free skate taking place as well as the ice dance free dance.