With rank seven, the German figure skaters won solid financial support for a further four years at the team competition in Pyeongchang of the German Ice Skating Union. They also improved their result of Sochi 2014 by one rank.
On Sunday, the German ice dance masters Kavita Lorenz and Joti Polizoakis from Oberstdorf as well as the national champion Nicole Schott (Essen) secured the important criterion “final fight chance” with eight places each time. Already on Friday, the pair-race runner-ups world champions Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot (Oberstdorf) as well as the German champion Paul Fentz from Berlin had collected important points for the DEU.
After a free Saturday Savchenko/Massot started their preparations for the pair’s decision again and followed their competitors in the team competition, which started with the free skating of the pairs. However, since China had not reached the final either, the current world champions Sui Wenjin and Han Cong were not on the ice.
Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford are also likely to be strong rivals for coach Alexander König’s charges in the fight for Olympic victory. The former world champions from Canada ran close to their best mark of the season and expanded the leadership of their compatriots. With 45 points, the North Americans are well ahead of the Olympic athletes from Russia (39) and the USA (36).
The team sheep’s gold will be awarded on Monday (10.00 a. m. local time/02.00 a. m. CET) after the individual runners and ice dancers have completed their free skating programs.
On Sunday Yevgeniya Medvedeva received the most applause from almost 10,000 spectators. The world and European champion set a new world record with 81.06 points in the short program.
With 56.88 points, the ice dancers Lorenz/Polizoakis missed their best mark of 61.09 in the season, partly because they ran a little too slow to South American rhythms at times to make no mistakes,”but now the first stress is gone. This is good for the actual ice dance competition,”said national coach Martin Skotnicky.
The early start times set at the request of US television were for the World Cup-17. We even started this season at 8:00 a. m.”, Lorenz reported, but she wanted to catch up on her sleep deficit in the near future:” With a little nap.”
Schott was awakened at the latest by a huge fall at the time of entering, but even in the short freestyle routine the 21-year-old didn’t want to succeed in the triple flip:”I have to become mentally stronger,”she then said self-critically.
In difficult situations Nicole still lacks self-confidence. But at the end of the programme, she managed it better again,”said the DEU sports director.