Russian pair Stolbova / Klimov wins silver at World Figure Skating Championships
SportRussian figure skating pair Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov have won silver medals in pair skating at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2014 taking place in Saitama, Japan. After the short and free skating programs, the Russians scored 215.92 points.
German pair Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy grabbed gold with 224.88 points. Bronze went to Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford (210.84 points).
Another Russian pair, Vera Bazarova and Yuri Larionov came 7th (189.44 points), and Julia Antipova and Nodari Maisuradze were 8th (186.22 points).
Bazarova and Larionov were unsatisfied with their performance in pair figure skating at the World Championships. “Before the World Championships, we flawlessly performed our programs several times, we approached the start in a good shape, but here we failed psychologically. Maybe, in this season we’ve lost self-confidence. When you do better at every start, it gives you strength. In our case, it was different. At the trainings, we succeeded, but at the competitions we were always missing something. Thus, now we should try to forget this season, take a good rest, gather wits and go for it,” Larionov said.Stolbova and Klimov are Olympic champions of Sochi in the team figure skating event and silver winners in individual tournament. Savchenko and Szolkowy became 5-fold world champions (2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014).
Bazarova noted that the pair hasn’t had such a fail even in the time when they had traumas. “Even when we had problems with health, the skating was better. Now, the whole season we failed. I don’t know what the cause was. Normally, coach change helps the skating pair, and the athletes experience uplift. Our performance in this season is utter nonsense,” she said.
Before the start of the previous season, the duo changed their coach from Lyudmila Kalinina to Nina Mozer.