The first big showdown for figure skaters is coming up – the Grand Prix final this week in Beijing. Only the six individual runners and pairs with the highest points make it into this select circle. For the first time ever, three German couples have qualified for this final of the world’s best figure skaters. But one duo had to cancel. We are showing the Grand Prix final in a live stream
Until 2018, it was only the future Olympic pair skating champion Alyona Savchenko who reached a Grand Prix final with her partner Robin Szolkowy and later with Bruno Massot. With Massot, Savchenko won the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang and today this legendary freestyle is still one of the most viewed videos in the ARD media library. After the high of the Olympic victory and the end of Savchenko/Massot’s career, the gaping performance gap in German figure skating also became visible.
At the beginning of this year it was once again the German pair skaters who were the first to win a medal. Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel received bronze at the European Championships for a very shaky performance, but at least it was precious metal again. The Berliners also qualified for this week’s final in China, but had to announce last Friday that they would not be able to compete because Robert Kunkel was suffering from back problems.
All eyes on Rabbit and Volodin
All eyes are now on Minerva Hase and her new partner Nikita Volodin. The new German duo won the Grand Prix in Finland in recent weeks and were in top form with increased performance in the victory in Japan. The duo goes into the competition in China’s capital Beijing with the second-best score of the season. However, the Russian-born Nikita Volodin caught a bad cold on the return journey from Japan, so that the two of them were only able to train very easily twice in Berlin before departure on Monday.
“Beijing is magical for me”
The coaching team tried to get the 24-year-old back on his feet in time with ginger-lemon tea and chicken soup, because the training and competition workload of the last few weeks is enough to prepare for the lucrative finale. “Beijing is magical for me” Minerva tells Hare shortly before taking off for China. “Beijing again, my partner sick again.” At the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, her ex-partner Nolan Seegert caught the corona virus and was the first German athlete to have to go into ten-day quarantine. He got fit in time for the competition, but then, exhausted, he collapsed in the freestyle and could hardly hold Minerva anymore.
No competition without drama
Especially at the competitions in Finland and Japan, the two showed what potential they have. They have only been a couple on the ice for a year and a half and they have only been skating together continuously for six months and yet no competition has been without drama: “At the Lombardia Trophy, Nikita forgot his pants, at the competition in Oberstdorf his shoelace broke before the short program, before the Grand Prix I first twisted and then he got injured and in Japan his shoelace eyelet broke during the six-minute run-in before the free skate I hope we have dealt with all the disruptive factors in one season” the 24-year-old from Berlin adds with a laugh.
But all of this also shows what the two of them are made of. You don’t let yourself be disturbed so easily. It is impressive to see the harmony with which they are already skating on the ice and mastering the complicated pair skating elements.
Sleepless nights and second chances for Volodin
When it was announced that Minerva Hase had chosen a Russian to start for Germany, there were some warnings. “There were quite a few people who said to me: ‘Are you sure you want to put yourself through this stress?’ He is Russian and when we decided to run together there was already a war. It was difficult with entry, permits and residence permits. It was quite an effort to get this sorted out and cost me a lot of nerves. I had moments when I thought it just wasn’t worth it. I’m all the happier at the moment that the sleepless nights have paid off. And for Nikita it is also a second chance to show his potential in his life.”
If Volodin gets 100 percent fit by Friday’s competition, the two of them want to compete for victory. After that, learning German is also on the agenda for the St. Petersburg native, because if things continue as before, he will have to learn the German national anthem as quickly as possible. “After the award ceremony in Japan, he came to me and immediately said that he had to learn the lyrics quickly so that he could sing along.”
Grimm/Savitskiy in the junior ice dance competition
What’s special about the Figure Skating Grand Prix Final is that the best juniors compete in their final at the same time in the same hall. The young Oberstdorf ice dancers Darya Grimm and Michail Savitskiy made it to the final of the world’s best junior skaters for the second time in a row. Last year the 17-year-old and the 20-year-old came fifth. This time they are among the narrower circle of favorites.
Darya Grimm and Mikhail Savitskiy.
Other Career planning
Savitskiy, who was born in Hesse, appears confident before his departure to China: “We want to be on the podium, but now we have to concentrate fully on running our two programs cleanly and then the judges will decide.” Like Hase/Volodin in pair skating, Grimm/Savitskiy also confidently won their two Junior Grand Prix competitions in Austria and Poland. It was only at the end of 2019 that Grimm, who was born in Wuppertal, and Savitskiy, who was born in Offenbach, became an ice dancing couple on the advice of their mothers. Her career as a single skater had stalled and the first trial training immediately showed that the two were a good fit for each other.
The career planning looked different: “If I give up singles, I’ll at most become a pair skater, but I’ll never go ice dancing.”, Savitskiy thought. As is often the case with good success stories, things turned out differently than intended. And once again it has been shown that you should listen to your mother more often.