Hare and Volodin win gold at the World Figure Skating Championships

Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin won gold for the first time at the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague. Five weeks after winning Olympic bronze at the Winter Games in Italy, the duo won the pair skating competition with 228.33 points, thus winning Germany’s first world title since 2018. Eight years ago, Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot triumphed in Milan.

Hase/Volodin defended their narrow lead from the short program over the European champions and Olympic silver medalists Anastasia Metelkina/Luka Berulawa from Georgia (218.41 points) with a good, but not entirely error-free free skate. The Canadians Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud came third (216.09 points). Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel were the second German duo to improve from tenth to seventh place and achieved a total of 194.11 points.

For Hase/Volodin, the World Championship title, alongside the Olympic bronze medal, is the greatest and possibly the last success of their joint career. The duo, who train in Berlin, have so far left their future after the end of the season open. Hase said before the title fights in the Czech capital that they would sit down together after the World Cup and then decide.
Hase/Volodin have been a figure skating couple for three and a half years. After World Cup bronze in 2024 and World Cup silver last year, they continued their impressive success story at World Championships with the gold coup in Prague – and even crowned it.

Hase/Volodin also benefited from the fact that the Japanese Olympic champions Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara, among others, forewent the end of a long and grueling season. But Hase/Volodin didn’t let that bother them. After the short program, the 2025 European champions and European Championship runners-up this year still had a lead of 0.33 points over Metelkina/Berulawa. “I think it was our best run in terms of the connection with the audience and also with each other within the program,” said Hase after a great tango performance in the short program. As at the Olympics, Hase/Volodin took to the ice in Prague as the leading and last pair in the free skate. This time the two showed hardly any nerves.