Saving the best for last: At the end of a long Olympic winter, Nicole Schott achieved the greatest success of her career so far. The six-time German figure skating champion landed an unexpected tenth place at the world title fights in Montpellier and drove off the ice with a smile on her face.
In the absence of her three Russian competitors, Olympic bronze medalist Kaori Sakamoto seized the moment and won World Championship gold for the first time. Loena Hendrickx from Belgium and the American Alysa Liu came closest to the Japanese.
While the fight for the precious metal was still going on, Schott could hardly believe her result. “Especially after the Olympics, such a result is very nice for me,” said the 25-year-old, who laid the foundation with sixth place in the short program. In Beijing, the sports soldier from Essen had thrown back a weak freestyle to 17th place.
Thanks to their placement, two German runners are eligible to start at next year’s World Championships in Saitama, Japan. As in the short freestyle, Schott did not fall in the long program either, the only small flaw was the last Salchow, which she only shot twice instead of three times.
At their home game in Montpellier in the afternoon, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron set course for their fifth world championship title in ice dancing. The Olympic champions from Beijing broke the previous world record in rhythm dancing by almost two points and scored 92.73 points.
Ukrainians celebrated frenetically
Right behind the French were Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, the Olympic bronze medalists from the USA. Third are her compatriots Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
The emotional highlight of the competition was the performance of Alexandra Nasarova and Maxim Nikitin. The six-time Ukrainian champions appeared in simple yellow and blue T-shirts and were loudly celebrated by the audience for their program to a Ukrainian folk song.
Having traveled from their war-torn home country without any training and in a roundabout way, the duo fought their way up to 16th place in the intermediate standings, but will no longer compete in the freestyle decider on Saturday (5:00 p.m./Eurosport 1 and ONE). “We could see the tanks and hear the bombs. My house no longer has any windows,” Nazarova reported from her native city of Kharkiv.
The medals will be awarded without German participation after the German champions Jennifer Janse van Rensburg and Benjamin Steffan had to cancel their World Championship start at short notice. The 26-year-old from Oberstdorf had tested positive for the corona virus shortly before leaving for France.
The world title fights will continue on Saturday (11:00 a.m./Eurosport 1 and ONE) with the men’s freestyle. Nikita Starostin from Dortmund starts for the German Skating Union.