GANGNEUNG, South Korea

Sui Wenjing knows what it takes to overcome injuries.

The Chinese pairs skater underwent surgeries on both of her feet a couple of years ago, taking her off the ice entirely for several months. The painful recovery began with learning how to walk again, then getting back into skates, and finally joining partner Han Cong for world-class competition.

So when Sui and Han had a training mishap several weeks before the Pyeongchang Olympics, leaving her with five stitches in her leg, she wondered whether she would make it to South Korea.

“I cried immediately,” she said with a laugh.

Well, the pair made it to the Olympics. And they left tears in a lot of eyes Wednesday with their breathtaking, almost ethereal short program to the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah.” The world champions scored a season-best 82.39 points, giving Sui and Han less than a point lead over Russian rivals Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov heading into Thursday’s free skate.

“Luckily the wound was not very big, five stitches,” Han said when asked what happened during the Chinese pair’s training accident. “She recovered pretty well, pretty quickly.”

Tarasova and Morozov, skating last among the 22 teams, scored 81.68 points to a piano concerto by Rachmaninov. That was also a season best for the pair, and kept them in contention for the gold medal.

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada were third with 76.82 points, less than a point ahead of German favorites Aliona Savchenkno and Bruno Massot, whose technical scores took a massive dip when the Frenchborn Massot did a double salchow instead of the planned triple.

That cost them about four points, possibly putting gold out of reach.

Six couples are within three points of the Canadians, meaning a potential tight squeeze for the podium.