Daily Times

Beijing: Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin won the pairs competition at the Grand Prix Final in Beijing on Friday, inching past their closest rivals by half a point. Despite coming second in Friday’s free skating to Italy’s Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii, the German team’s strong showing the day before in the short programme led to a final score of 206.43 to the Italians’ 205.88. Volodin had been ill just before the event, the pair said on Thursday.

“We are super, super happy, we came into this competition with no expectation and ending with first place is more than we could wish for,” said a delighted Hase just minutes after getting off the ice. The pair have only been skating together since October 2022, but won the season’s Grand Prix Finland and the NHK Trophy. “You just have to work even harder and have a good partner,” said Hase when asked their secret. Their success was hard fought, with the top three competitors all scoring within around two points of each other.

European champions Conti and Macii’s free skate earned a score of 135.58 — a personal best — with Hase and Volodin on 133.87. After finishing their routine to the “Cinema Paradiso” soundtrack, Conti looked joyful as she stepped off the rink to enthusiastic plaudits from their coach. Canada’s Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, who came second in the short programme, dropped to third on Friday. Skating to “Interview with a Vampire” and dressed in black with crimson jewels glittering on their chests, a few imperfect landings saw them obtain 133.08 for a final score of 204.30.

Forty-year-old Stellato-Dudek, who began skating again in 2016 after 16 years off the ice, said afterwards that they had performed “way below our expectations”, according to skating news site Golden Skate. “My standards are higher than anyone can imagine… It is new for us that people are having major expectations and are expecting us to win. We need to adapt to that.”