German couples at the Figure Art Run EM: The dance for gold has started

Figure skating is a sport of curiosities – among other things because winter consists of two seasons on the ice. In autumn, the best like the Berlin couple runners Minerva Hase/Nikita Wolodin in the Grand Prix series shoot their pirouettes in a number of high-class invitation tournaments. But it is only at the end of January, after the turn of the year, it gets really serious: Because after a break of two months, the real dance for gold begins at the European Championships.

For Minerva Hase, 25, this means showing durability in the jumps, throws and spectacular whirlpool through the air. With Nikita Wolodin, her partner of the same age from St. Petersburg, she won the Grand Prix final in December: So you are officially the autumn champions in the international runner. And that is why your claim at the European Championship in Tallinn can only be “tied to the performance of the first half”, as Minerva Hase had put it unpretentiously before the start of the competition.

In the first part, the short program for the blues “Your Were Mine” by Tami Neilson, they succeeded fabulously on Wednesday. They had to wait a long time and the last of the 18 couples on the ice, but the first element, the litter twist, in which the runner spinded three times around the longitudinal axis before their partner catches them again, the jurors with bonus points graded. Minerva Hase and Nikita Wolodin did not allow themselves the smallest uncertainty; There was a point deduction only because of a supposed time error. They confidently lead the competition with 71.59 points in front of the Italians Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii, the decision is made in the freestyle on Thursday evening.

Hase/Wolodin recently pulled trains in the ice skating sky, and in their first season they became third in the World Championships last year. And yet they have to get up a little in December after the German championships, in which some atypical mistakes including unplanned contact contact made them. At that time, they attributed the lack of concentration to the effort after the efforts of the Grand Prix victory and to a lack of tension due to a lack of national competition; In addition to them, only the young Chemnitz duo Letizia Roscher/Luis Schuster started.

SCHOCK/Kunkel are fifth after the short program

In front of the ice skating winter, part II, her Russian trainer Dmitri Sawin therefore remedied and in January it was a ten -day training camp at the Berlin base. Sawin, who usually only accompanies the duo in competitions, invited other couples from Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland. Letizia Roscher/Luis Schuster, who are twelfth after the short program, also trained.

When it comes to the shine of the medals, the second German top duo, Annika Hocke, 24, and Robert Kunkel, 25, can still hope in Tallinn. The Berlin couple runners who train at the ice skating center in Bergamo traveled without great competition practice. Annika Hocke had last had to pause because of a foot injury, a bone marrow edema. She refrained from participating in the German championships, was treated, avoided wearing a ice skate for 14 days-and was in space in the short of the European Championship with her partner despite a small error in the litter-rittberger (62.68 points) five.

“The foot stops,” she said before the first appearance in Tallinn, although the healing process has not yet been completed. Now the foot has also survived the rock ‘n’ roll number on runners in the short program: the dance for gold has just just started.