Last wobble prevents gold?
Hase and Volodin get silver to the World Cup cud of their lives
Hase and Volodin get silver to the World Cup cud of their lives
28.03.2025, 6:33 am
The German top duo Minerva Hase and Nikita Wolodin fetches silver at the world skating world championship in the USA. Gold is only missed very thinly. The two 25-year-olds show an almost perfect freestyle in the couple running competition. Only at the end there is a little wobble.
After the World Cup cud of her life, Minerva-Fabienne Hase dropped back onto the ice, couple running silver as a reward for the gala alongside Nikita Volodin, the German figure skater received radiantly on the podium. “That was our best freestyle of the season – from the emotions, the elements. It was good to the point,” said Hase.
With 219.08 points, the European champions and Grand Prix winners set up a personal best of the season. They also improved their World Cup result from the previous year when they won bronze. Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara prevented the fact that Hase and Volodin travel to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in around ten months as vice world champion and not as reigning world champions to the Olympic Games.
The Japanese (219.79) was the last couple of the evening to push themselves past the German prefabricated duo. For Miura and Kihara it is the second World Cup title after 2023. “It’s a shame that it was so scarce. But we can’t accuse ourselves of giving one hundred percent,” said Hase. Bronze went to the vice-European champions Sara Conti and Niccolo Maccii from Italy (210.47). The last German World Cup gold was seven years ago. In 2018 Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot triumphed.
The second German couple Annika Hocke/Robert Kunkel did not remain error -free even in the freestyle after the failed short program and did not get past 18th place with 167.72 points. “I felt terribly after the short program. I really had to pull myself together for the freestyle,” said Hocke: “It was a good fight.”
“We are very, very happy and proud”
Hase and Volodin, the World Cup thirds of the previous year, had laid the foundation for success the day before with a successful short program. As a third place in the last group of the evening, the duo went into the race for the medals – and confirmed its permanent place in the top of the world. In Vivaldi’s “four seasons”, the two delivered a demanding, technically clean and almost flawless performance. Only when the last lifting did they afford a little wobble. The best freestyle of the evening (145.49) the Berliners pushed close to gold. Hase/Volodin did not quite caught up with the gap from the short program.
“We are very, very happy and proud. They delivered to the point. Last year bronze, this silver – that makes it very positive into the future,” said sports director Claudia Pfeifer from the German Eislauf Union (DeU) of the sports information service.
