Olympic pair skating champions Alyona Savchenko and Bruno Massot have won the gold medal at the World Figure Skating Championships in Milan.
After 280 fabulous seconds, they knelt on the ice and beamed with disbelief: exactly five weeks after their Olympic victory, Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot crowned the most successful season of their career and surpassed themselves. With another magical free skate to the film music “Die Welt von oben” and the world record score of 245.84 points, the two from Oberstdorf also won the gold medal at the World Championships in Milan.
And when the victory was decided, the Ukrainian-born girl she cried as she did in Pyeongchang. Again the performance was almost flawless, the audience celebrated the duo already before the end of the program.
It was Savchenko’s sixth World Championship title and her partner’s first. Silver went to the Russian European Champions Yevgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov (225.53), Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres from France (218.36) came third. The defending champions and Olympic runners-up Sui Wenjing and Han Cong from China were not at the start due to injury.
The protégés of coach Alexander König now want to decide about their sporting future after a holiday in April. An end to the competition career and a continuation of the show career seems more likely. However, it is also possible to continue participating in World and European Championships.
In this case Annika Hocke from Berlin and Ruben Blommaert from Oberstdorf would have to be content with a supporting role. Coach Knut Schubert’s protégés came in 13th place on their joint World Cup debut: “We showed what we can do and even overtook three pairs,” said Belgian-born Blommaert.
At the end of a disappointing Olympic season, German figure skating champion Paul Fentz had reason to celebrate. With the best short program of his career, the Berliner catapulted himself into twelfth place in the intermediate ranking at the world championships in Milan this afternoon.
At the top was a duel between US champion Nathan Chen (101.94) and the European Championship third Mikhail Kolyada from Russia (100.08). A chase to catch up has to start in the freestyle of Olympic runner-up Shoma Uno from Japan (94.26), who dropped back to fifth place due to a mistake.
The 25-year-old Fentz was just as dissatisfied with rank 22 at the Olympics as he was with rank 16. Place with the EM. But in the Lombardy metropolis, the sports soldier managed almost everything in the short freestyle to the pop classic “Wonderwall”: Fentz stood his toe-loop combination just as sure as the triple Axel and the triple Lutz. In the end, 82.49 points were never achieved, rank twelve and the cheers of many figure skating fans who had come from Germany.
“Now I have one foot in the door at the World Cup and all I have to do is walk through it. This requires consistency, that’s what I’ll be working on in the future,” said Fentz. After a difficult season, he has gained a lot of self-confidence over the past weeks thanks to good training performances: “Things have been going really well at home in Berlin and also here in Milan. Now I just want to have fun.”
The protégé of coach Romy Oesterreich now has the opportunity on Saturday to significantly improve his only World Cup result to date. At the 2017 World Cup in Helsinki Fentz was 20. has become.
Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu was not in Milan. The Japanese, who won the gold medal in Pyeongchang despite a foot injury that had not yet completely healed up, decided not to go to Europe as much as former World Champion Patrick Chan from Canada. Spanish Olympic bronze medallist Javier Fernandez will not be competing either.
The world title competitions will continue on Friday with the courtesy dance of the ice dancers. The German Champions Kavita Lorenz and Joti Polizoakis from Oberstdorf will start for the German Ice Skating Union.