Mark Kondratyuk won the men’s competition at the European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn.
The Russian champion won ahead of Italy’s Daniel Grassl and Deniss Vasiljevs from Latvia.
Meanwhile, Dortmund’s Nikita Starostin has surprisingly overshadowed four-time German champion Paul Fentz.
At his remarkable European Championship premiere, the 19-year-old native of Russia from ERC Dortmund Westfalen performed seven triple jumps – including two axels – in the freestyle. The judges honored this with 214.40 points and 13th place.
The Berlin Fentz, ten years his senior, managed to do the fourfold toe loop. However, he failed in almost all other jumps and fell back to 16th place with 206.06 points. “I felt good and was ready. I have absolutely no idea why it was,” said Fentz.
Fentz probably to Beijing
With the nomination for the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing on Tuesday, Fentz should still get the ticket for use in the team competition. Starostin is not allowed to start at the Olympics because he does not yet have German citizenship. Since both missed out on a top ten place, Germany will only have one place at the European Championship next season.
In ice dancing, Katharina Müller and Tim Dieck (Dortmund) had to be content with 67.46 points and 13th place in the rhythmic dances. The duo, trained by the former Russian world-class ice dancer Anjelika Krilowa, finished 13th in the overall European Championship rankings in 2020. “The coach said we should have had more momentum,” said Dieck. His partner found: “Actually, almost everything was fine.”
As expected, the world champions and defending champions Victoria Sinitsina/Nikita Katsalapow from Russia danced their way to the top. The pair from Moscow scored 87.89 points, putting them ahead of their compatriots Alexandra Stepanova/Iwan Bukin, who scored 86.45 points, ahead of the freestyle on Saturday.
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