Lachlan Hay has skated to a personal best result in a World Cup in Sofia, Bulgaria, finishing sixth in the 1500 metres, while fellow AIS scholarship athlete Tatiana Borodulina has also registered another top ten result, placing ninth in the women’s 1500.

A third member of the OWI team, Jeremy Beck, also registered a pb result, finishing eleventh in the 1000m.

Hay finished second in his opening heat, then repeated the placing in the semi-final, leading for much of the race before being passed by Korean skater Jin-Hwan Park.

In the 8-man final, he could not match the speed of the leading Koreans, but finished ahead of Russian Ruslan Zakharov and US skater Jeff Simon.

Ho-Suk Lee won the gold medal in a time of 2 minutes 12.439 seconds, with compatriot Si-Bak Sung in the silver medal position on a time of 2:12.650.

Bronze went to Canadian Charles Hamelin.

Hay’s time was 2:14.250

“Lachlan is looking strong and more competitive,” said Olympic Winter Institute and AIS short track coach Ann Zhang.

“We had a very good preparation after World Cup 4, almost seven weeks, and the team’s training level got very high, very tight.”

“Tatiana is good on every distance now,” Zhang said, “so I let her skate the 1500 instead of the 500, thinking ahead to the world championships in March.”

“So I let her practise the other distances to try to make the final, but it was too much, she was too tense, and made her move too early, so missed out on the A final.”

“But it has been a good experience for her.”

Borodulina also finished in 11th place in her 1000m race.