Sport figure skating
Gold is in sight on their joint European Championship debut
As of: 4:30 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes
Minerva Hase and Nikita Wolodin have good chances for the medal ceremony on Thursday
Source: dpa
They have only recently been a pair on the ice and have already reached the top: Berlin figure skaters Minerva Hase and Nikita Wolodin are aiming for gold in pair skating at the European Championships in Lithuania. Only a Georgian duo shows a better short program.
Their joint premiere at international championships didn’t go completely perfectly, but the German favorites Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Wolodin impressed at the start of the European Figure Skating Championships in Kaunas. With 69.63 points, the two 24-year-olds from Berlin came in second place on Wednesday. The best short free skate was presented by the Russians Anastasija Metelkina and Luka Berulawa, who competed for Georgia. The pair that last competed in the juniors received 71.30 points.
“I was very nervous and I’m happy that I was able to pull myself together,” said Hase after her European Championship debut with her new Russian partner. He made a slight mistake with the triple Salchow. “The landing wasn’t good,” admitted Volodin. And yet: With this performance, the new dream duo has preserved their chance of winning the title.
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After their breathtaking rise to the world class with victory in the Grand Prix final, Hase and Wolodin went into the European Championship as hot contenders for the title. Despite the fact that they have only been training together for a year, they are currently number one in the pair skating world.
Rapid rise to the top: Minerva Hase and Nikita Wolodin
Quelle: dpa/Mindaugas Kulbis
In contrast, their national rivals Annika Hocke (23) and Robert Kunkel (24) were unlucky recently. After a strong start to the season with victory in the first Grand Prix competition in the USA, Kunkel’s lumbar inflammation got worse and worse and they had to take a break for weeks. “As a result, I was completely unable to move at the end,” said Kunkel, who traveled to the European Championships fully fit again. They had “lowered their expectations a bit”, but had not written off a medal.
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But that becomes difficult after the short program. Things didn’t go well for last year’s third-place finishers. Hocke only turned the Salchow two instead of three times, which meant he only achieved sixth place with 62.52 points. In order to win a medal again, the duo would have to get a good five points more than the third-placed Italians Lucrezia Beccari and Matteo Guarise for the free skate on Thursday (6 p.m.).
Sporting hope, but financial worries
Thanks to the performances of the two Berlin couples, the German Ice Skating Union (DEU) believes that it has a promising future in the race with a view to the 2026 Winter Olympics. However, the DEU is in a precarious financial situation. And aiming for Olympic medals requires money, which is lacking in this expensive sport. The halving of federal funding after the 2021 Olympic debacle in Beijing without top ten places caused a ebb in the association’s coffers and hardship for the figure skaters.
Annika Hocke and Robert are in sixth place before the free skate
Quelle: AP/Mindaugas Kulbis
While Hase/Volodin enjoyed the joy of their success and put economic questions aside, Hocke/Kunkel publicly complained about the financial misery. The couple has been training in Italy since 2022. This costs 35,000 to 45,000 euros annually, but it paid off with bronze at the European Championships in 2023. Based on their results, one can “objectively prove why Bergamo is the better location for us,” said Kunkel.
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With a supplementary grant of 250,000 euros from the federal government, they and other runners were able to get some help out of their trouble. “The level of frustration was high on the association side and among the athletes,” reports DEU sports director Claudia Pfeifer and emphasizes: “The surcharge does not help in the long term, but only until spring.” The funding for the sports associations applies to one Olympic cycle and is therefore unchanged until the next winter games. In order to aim for a medal there, Hase/Volodin will also have to increase their budget to be able to pay for trainers or costumes.
The example of the DEU shows how vulnerable the potential analysis (PotAS) and its data are, on the basis of which decisions about financial support are made. “The system is not suitable for figure skating,” criticizes Pfeifer. This means that no “valid statement about the athlete potential” of an association can be made. This particularly applies to the new dream couple Rabbit/Volodin. “We specifically focused on the newcomers and drew attention to their potential,” says Pfeifer. At the beginning there was only one video from them and no results and therefore there was no positive funding decision for the duo. “We delivered and proved that our analysis was accurate,” she emphasized. Hase/Wolodin now want to continue to cause a stir at the European Championships.
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